[X Newbies] OSX Trim The Fat

[Bill Reburn]

Don't be too disappointed. If one thing is plaguing a lot of OSX performance
right now - it's OSX compatibility/functionality in the software.

Sure lots of smaller companies are coming out with cool tools to get the job
done - but so many of the tried and true have a way to go too. Quark and
Adobe.

I have pretty much the same system as you (550/768ram/stock HD).
You have to remember that this config was introduced in Oct/2001. It came
with a few advances (better video, Combo drive) and unfortunately one
crippler (the cache thing).

I would suggest that you do upgrade your ram, buy another  512 stick.. Not a
huge upgrade for performace.. But a better step for overall leg/elbow room
for OSX and apps.

You could upgrade the HD (aren't these 4200's??) I heard the newer 5200
liquid bearing drive's are noticeably better.

One of the things I noticed that I love about OSX, even if things get bogged
(the Finder unfortunately is the WORST) - you can almost always plod away in
some other app albeit it not as smooth as if running alone. This takes a
long time to get used to. I equate my high level fan running with me
*really* using my machine - and that thing doesn't come down a notch all day
sometimes.. You can really really bash your Ti without it choking out. What
5 or 6 apps are you running that are hogging things?? Daily I run -
Entourage, Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, Acrobat, Distiller (in Classic),
Chimera, IE, Toast, iTunes all along with a couple useless tools and one
great one iPulse. Certain apps as I mentioned earlier have a ways to go with
the optimization. Often the CPU will be maxed out - I fire open Terminal and
watch the results of top and there's Entourage - idle, hogging 60% of the
CPU! Or Photoshop - idle and in the background, nothing open, hogging
10-20%CPU! Then you get the Finder running at 60-70% for 5 minutes just to
open a folder of a 1000+ items.

I would really really love to pick up a new TISD - but not getting the
newest toy on the block means that while I am still getting very useful
performance out of the 550, by Summer I will be buying the machine to trump
the almighty TiSD out now. It's all a big waiting game..

Unless you're bashing your Ti and still losing out on how ever much $ a day
becase of it's lack of performance, sit back and watch for those new
systems!! But don't forget - you still own one of the coolest machines on
the planet (just not the fastest one)

Anyway, I am rambling - time to go.

On 12/13/02 4:30 PM, "Nigel Williamson" <nigel.williamson at mojo.com.au>
wrote:

> At 9:21 -0600 on 13/12/02, Michael Winter wrote:
>> Bottom line, rather than trying to trim everything you can down,
>> find out what's actually causing the slow-down. It may be there's
>> nothing you can do about it and you can end up spending a lot of
>> time for little or no result.
> 
> I think you've hit the nail on the head Mike. There seems to be no
> one app that's causing me grief... the entire system is just not as
> fast as I would like it to be. Which I attribute to a variety of
> things... Slow processor (550), not really enough ram (512M), slow HD
> (5200RPM) and not really enough space on the drive at any given time
> (perhaps 2G free max on average).
> 
> Think I'll just have to grin and bare until I upgrade my hardware.
> 
> Thank you all for your responses.
> 
> Nigel








Bill Reburn