[X-Newbies] Slow, slow, slow computing

[W Lane]

On 06-Feb-16, at 12:40 PM, R.C.Dickins wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am a desperate newcomer to this list. I live in a small  
> midwestern city of 135,000, where Macs are not sold and where I  
> know only one other Mac user. Not only are Mac users rare, but  
> conversations concerning Macs are even more rare. Consequently, I  
> apologize if you have heard my problems before. If so, however, I  
> am also hoping that you will know a lot of solutions and I hope  
> that's so. I have a home business of putting out documents and  
> newsletters and need to keep my computer going.
>
> I have a Power Macintosh G3 which runs on a 266 MHz processor and  
> has 576MB of memory. The hard disk is divided into the following  
> sections:
>
> Mac OSX 10.2.8 with 6.8GB (1.3 GB Free)

Not enough free space. 10.2 is slower than 10.3 which in turn is  
slower than 10.4

> Mac Storage with 43.6 GB (41.7 GB Free)

matters not

> Mac OS 9.2 with 6.8 GB (5.6 GB Free)

matters not

>
> When I am in Mac OSX, the computer seems to run more slowly every  
> day. Mail and Word for Mac are particularly slow and I sometimes  
> lose Word when I am working on charts. A check with Norton Disk  
> Doctor does not reveal any problems and only light fragmentation.

Get rid of every vestige of Norton. 'Back in the day' it was a pretty  
good product, now, in X, I think I would be safe to say that it  
causes as many issues as it fixes.

>
> Could it help to move things to Mac Storage to give more room to  
> OSX? What kinds of things can I move?

Well, yes, it could BUT...while others on the list will not doubt  
offer the 'how to' it's not generally as simple as just dragging  
things over there. X is a whole different animal that 9.
>
> Thanks for any thoughts you may have.
>
> Muddled in the Midwest
>

At the core of your issue are three things:

Lack of HD space for X, which you can't do a lot about very easily,  
given that X must be in a partition <8 gig and it must be contained  
within the first 8 gig of the boot drive.
Old OS, which is closely tied to issue #3
Old hardware.

If AT ALL possible, upgrade to a newer machine. It'll come with newer  
OS in all likelihood and won't have the HD limitations of your  
current machine.