bad performance

[sandrina]

Hello to you all,

I need some advice. My mac has been very sluggish lately and dont know what is the best to do to make it work smoothly and fast like before. I have a big load of pictures, movies and music which I have been transfering to an external disc but still its not helping too much. I also have the nikon software installed which I dont use. If I take that out will that affect my importing to iphoto? How can I improve the performance of my mac?

thanks!

 

[Corbab]

First of all, I don't see how this is at all related to graphics or photography.

Secondly, it's literally impossible to offer advice if you don't share your specs and anything you think might be taking up a lot of processor. How much RAM do you have?, How fast is your processor?, etc.

Importing into iPhoto might have as much to do with the size of the files or your connection method as the processor load. If you're really concerned about it, quit everything else.

In the mean time, open Activity Monitor and sort by %CPU. This will show you how much memory every process on your machine is using. The most important thing is DO NOT quit any process that you didn't open. This could cause some functions of your computer to behave erratically or even prevent the computer from functioning entirely.

Welcome to the forums, and sorry for such a harsh post, but like I said it's hard to help you if you don't help us.

 

[sandrina]

Hi Corbab!

thanks for your reply and yes you´re right I should have shared my specs.

Macbook 13", 1 processor 2.4 Ghz, RAM 2 GB, HD 250 GB

Sorry I´m new here did not know where to post my post, thought that people dealing with photos as me would be the right way to go.
I take load of pictures and videos and now all takes a while to open and work with . I thought maybe I have doubled some of those photo files in order to have filled up my memory the way it is now. Maybe I should get rid of the Nikon software if I dont use to free some memory up... I really do not know if its there the problem, could it be that I am uploading twice? in iphoto and in the nikon software without knowing??


activity monitor shows


1.95GB used of system memory - free 42.50MB - inactive 526 MB - wired 440.38 MB - active 1.01 GB

CPU - %idle 89

thank you so much Corbab!

 

[cwa107]

Well, first off, let's get our terms straight here:

Memory (also known as "RAM") is a space that programs are loaded into in order for the CPU to process them. Memory is purged every time you reboot your computer. It is also freed when you quit applications.

Hard disk space is semi-permanent storage. It's where your operating system, applications, documents and data are stored for the long term and it remains occupied even after you turn your computer off.

Generally speaking, you want to have 20% of your hard disk clear. So, if you've got so much data stored on your Mac's hard disk that there's less than 20% free space available, it's time to either clean up (delete) data or move it elsewhere or upgrade the hard disk. You can see stats on your hard disk by right-clicking Macintosh HD on your desktop and clicking "Get Info". That will yield a window like this:

Here you can see that nearly 300GB of my 430GB is still available.

As far as memory goes, you can speed things up just by not keeping so many programs opened simultaneously. In your example, you indicate that quite a bit of your memory is being used at the moment in time you took that snapshot. If the snapshot is representative of how many programs you need to have opened simultaneously to ensure you're productive, then you might want to consider a memory upgrade in order to give yourself a bit more latitude when you're working.

 

[sandrina]

Dear cwa107,

you have been extremely helpful

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I´ve got this "disk inventory x1.0" program which gives me a good picture of what is going on in my memory, so I´ve started this morning (for me) transfering a lot of data to my external HD. Will keep an eye open for that 20% always free.

S.

 

[Collin Bl]

This is a good app for a pictorial and locating the biggies;
Download GrandPerspective for Mac - Graphically shows disk usage within a file system. MacUpdate Mac Software Downloads

 

[sandrina]

thanks Collin, will check that one out too!!!