General Intel iMac Q

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Hi all!

I'm new here, so sorry if this isn't posted in the correct place.

I bought a 20" Intel-based iMac in March of 2006 (almost 1 year ago exactly, in fact,) and was excited to be able to abandon my ancient, POS Windows machine...hopefully forever.

However, my Mac is not living up to the hype. I haven't been able to find any reliable information on why I'm having this problem, so I thought I'd come here for suggestions.

Basically, this thing is SLOW! For instance, clicking on the user name at the top right to switch users takes 15 seconds for the drop-down to appear! It usually goes into the spinning colorwheel...all for a click on the user name! Whenever I try to load photos into iPhoto (i.e. hook up my camera and let it do it's thing), it takes FOREVER for iPhoto to recognize the camera, and then once iPhoto starts bouncing on the dock, it takes like 20 seconds for it to respond (all the while flashing the colorwheel.)

I also use Photoshop and Illustrator, which are slow...and I understand why. I've read a ton about how they use Rosetta and are therefore handicapped...but iPhoto? And trying to switch users? Those are native, right?! It seems like having it take 10 seconds to awaken from screensaver (the desktop shows up but the mouse doesn't move) is something wrong that shouldn't be happening.

Oh, one more thing: WORD. Word runs more slowly on this thing than on my old Compaq with Windows ME! No joke! I click on the dock, (which, by the way, usually takes a long time to come out of hiding, and then sometimes acts like it's frozen until I madly wiggle the mouse around,) and the Word icon bounces for-freakin-EVER until it opens. It's truly pathetic.

So, my question is: Did I get a lemon? Is there something I can do (tests, software updates that don't appear under 'software update', etc.) to help it move faster?

Any help will be most appreciated!

Regards,

wlg1218

p.s. I forgot to mention, it has 1GB RAM.
 
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Me again...

A perfect example of what I'm talking about just happened.

I minimized this window, and went to eject a CD...when I clicked on the CD to move it to the trash, the colorwheel showed up, and it simply refused to go away. It's not so much slow as just unresponsive...like I click on something and either nothing happens, or it happens really slowly...even if it's a system utility or something definitely native...the kind of stuff that should be super fast!
 
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Umm...if I have any other suggestions for the list? As in, in addition to 'read the rules' and 'use the search?'

Nope, nothing to contribute there; I did try both of those things and was unable to locate anything to help me with my specific problem...

Hence the post.
 
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Umm...if I have any other suggestions for the list? As in, in addition to 'read the rules' and 'use the search?'

Nope, nothing to contribute there; I did try both of those things and was unable to locate anything to help me with my specific problem...

Hence the post.
No, the first bit I posted is a link to a stickied thread
The quote is from that thread, telling you that if something isn't working right, then you should try the suggestions contained in that thread.
 
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Thanks!

I'll give them a try and see what happens.

Sorry to sound agitated...my machine is really irking me!

wlg1218
 
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How often do you run maintenance on your computer?
 
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I don't have a specific solution, although feel your pain. I had similar situation before and simply just backed up my info and did a fresh reinstall. My system ran like new again, well because it was.
 
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Photoshop, Illustrator and Word are indeed a joke at the moment. My colleague often screams as it takes about a minute to switch between them.

iPhoto should be nippy - what kind of camera do you have?

I'm sure having any Rosetta app open slows down the whole machine, even affecting native programs.

Blame Adobe, Microsoft and Apple for your woes - they've all got a part to play in your problems. If Apple could produce an x86 version of OS X, along with all its applications, Adobe could have had CS3 out by now.

Microsoft's Apple dept is 3 men in a shed at the back of MS HQ - they're supposed to get round to Office 07 towards the end of the year.
 
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Did your iMac come with a desktop or laptop hard drive? I find that to be the dilemma on my mini. I have a 5.1 iMac (Oct 06) and it's super duper zippy. My neighbor has one from around the same time as you (its a 4.1 iMac) and it's super duper zippy as well.

You should run MenuMeters. It'll tell you everything about your machine in a glance. You can see the bottleneck as it happens. When you ask "*** is taking so long??", the menu replies "RAM is full, chill out." or "CPU pinned, take a nap" or "Hard drive is busy, go get coffee".
 
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I second the vote for MenuMeters. I couldn't live without it. I am not sure I would agree with giulio's proxy advice from it though, such as "take a nap"! :dive: Instead, I use MenuMeters to spot any issues as they happen. If I am not doing anything with the machine and I see the CPU is pegged at 100%, I know I have an issue. Same for hard drive.

For example I once found a widget that was misbehaving and keeping the CPU pegged full out. I discovered the issue via MenuMeters, and then used the Mac's Activity Monitor to zero in on the offending process. Unfortunately, I don't remember which one it was.
 
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Download system optimizer X. It's free and will speed your system up nicely. Also, make sure that you dont have any programs open all the time on each user account. My brother just bought a new mac and his kids leave every single program open on their user account. So, when switching users it takes forever. I told him to make sure that all programs are closed on the kids account and it sped right up. He called me amazed how much faster his computer was. -Todd
 
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I am not sure I would agree with giulio's proxy advice from it though, such as "take a nap"! :dive:

Whu? Why? Whats wrong with that?? :baron: haha

BTW this brings me to a gripe about OSs in general. All of them show how much ram and CPU any process is using. But when it comes to disk usage, we're stick guessing.
It would be nice to see something like...

DiskID disk0 usage is at 75% duty:
Finder: 0%
System Events: 1%
MDS: 50%
...etc

And then you'd know.... my HD is going nuts because it's currently being indexed.
 

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