lazy computer

August 5, 2008 7:07 PM

Why is my iMac running slow?

2 year old iMac is running annoyingly slow; how can I remedy it?

I mostly just use Word, Firefox, and Itunes. It goes slow when I switch between programs.

Mac OS X version 10.4.11
1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo
512 MB 667 MHz RAM

thank you.

posted by Jason and Laszlo to computers & internet (16 comments total)

You need more RAM! 512 MB is well below what I would consider a tolerable threshhold for any recent version of OS X.
posted by bcwinters at 7:11 PM on August 5, 2008

how do i get more RAM?
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 7:14 PM on August 5, 2008

Agree on the RAM. My more like 7 year old G4 has 512 MB as well and it's really not sufficient for 10.4 - in addition, my shrinking hard disk space (I'm getting down to under a quarter of my total capacity) is really hammering the performance further. I was able to restore marginally acceptable performance by mercilessly culling and archiving hard-disk hogging applications and files.
posted by nanojath at 7:20 PM on August 5, 2008

You can purchase it and install it yourself, or have a more savvy friend do it, or pay to get it done at an Apple store or somewhere else that services Apples.
posted by nanojath at 7:23 PM on August 5, 2008

I think this page displays RAM that is compatible with your Intel processor based iMac

http://dealnews.com/memory/prices/systems/Apple-i-Mac-Intel/41494/2GBx2.html

I would recommend getting 2GB or 4GB of ram
posted by bottlebrushtree at 7:23 PM on August 5, 2008

Buy it. If you don't know how to get more RAM, I'd advise taking it to a service center and having them do the upgrade.
posted by chairface at 7:26 PM on August 5, 2008

I usually find that OWC Computing has pretty good prices and their site is very good about easily matching up your model of Mac with the RAM it takes.

On the model of iMac you have, adding RAM should be pretty straightforward using the page nanojath linked to.

If you have an Apple store do the upgrade, you'll pay a lot more--a cursory glance shows that they want $200 for 2 GB of RAM for your machine; OWC has 4 GB for under a hundred.
posted by bcwinters at 7:48 PM on August 5, 2008

Run the command 'top' from the command line first and monitor if there's any process that's using a lot of resources constantly ...
posted by joewandy at 8:06 PM on August 5, 2008

joewandy, please some details on how to do that.
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 8:32 PM on August 5, 2008

Or if you're not a fan of the command line, open activity monitor. However, if your slowdowns are showing up when you switch applications, it is because your current application is in RAM, but needs to be put into swap and the background application needs to be loaded into RAM. You can verify this by having activity monitor open, messing around in word, stopping for a few seconds, then switching to firefox. If activity monitor's disk activity graph shows a spike in disk activity, then yes, you need more RAM. (512 MB isn't really enough for just the OS, let alone applications.)

RAM can be purchased most anywhere, but if you're not sure where to get it, let alone for a good price and the right kind, let alone how to install it (all rather straight forward things, the advice above is good, I'm a fan of newegg for computer parts) you might want to enlist the help of a more computer savvy friend and just buy him or her a few beers.
posted by Brian Puccio at 8:36 PM on August 5, 2008

One thing that can really slow a Mac down is files on the desktop. Move those into other folders and you will likely see a notable and immediate improvement in performance.

More RAM will help even more but this might save your sanity in the meantime.
posted by acorncup at 8:49 PM on August 5, 2008

My creaky old iBook ultimately needs more RAM, too, but in the meantime I've got it behaving a little more nicely once I got an external hard drive for all my music and photos.
posted by scody at 11:53 PM on August 5, 2008

Yeah, Other World Computing is safe; they guarantee the RAM is in spec for the model of Mac specified. Plus, they'll mail via USPS for a reasonable rate instead of forcing you to pay for UPS or FedEx.

One thing that can really slow a Mac down is files on the desktop. Move those into other folders and you will likely see a notable and immediate improvement in performance.

The desktop is essentially just another Finder window. You're not going to see much of a slow-down unless you're saving large (at least a few megs) images there with dynamic icon previews turned on. Even then, once generated those previews are cached in RAM. A cluttered desktop will take longer to display on startup, but if you have enough memory it's not going to be an ongoing problem.
posted by D.C. at 5:01 AM on August 6, 2008

I have the same problem, and it got markedly worse when I upgraded to the current version of Word. I'm also going to get more RAM. Thanks to everyone for their comments and the recommendation of Other World Computing.
posted by PatoPata at 8:16 AM on August 6, 2008

Just FYI - there is no reason to buy RAM from Apple. They'll charge you double for the same RAM. Buy it from the folks listed above or from Crucial.com. Any local computer store can add the RAM for you in a few minutes and probably won't charge you much money. Call around.
posted by cnc at 9:22 AM on August 6, 2008

To follow up, I haven't bought new RAM yet, but I did take these steps and things have gotten significantly smoother running:

-Emptied trash and download folders (I had never done this)
-moved most things off of the desktop into Documents folder (with the understanding that the desktop runs on limited RAM)
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 9:36 AM on October 13, 2008