Slow as molasses lately...

[Gary Mark]

Okay here's what I'm running:

PB G4/400 640MB 40G OS 10.2 (Jaguar) Usually run Mail, Safari, Acrobat 
Reader and Graphic Converter simultaneously and others on occasion.

Lately, Mail and Safari have been 'spinning the hard drive' and 
spinning the beach ball between requests.  It's really bogging down my 
productivity to wait for these cycles.  What is going on?  Why does the 
OS/application need to access the the disk so much?

I might add that I've had two instances (since February) where I lost 
all my preferences from the OS crashing and me rebuilding the 
desktop/repairing permissions.  I nearly freaked when I lost all my 
emails/accounts.

Thanks,

Gary Mark
Oakville, ON Canada