[X4U] Beach Ball

[Ralph]

I have a "dome base" iMac that's developed a bad case of beach balls.  
The cursor appears most often when I choose Print... from almost any  
application. It also often comes up when I choose File > Open... In  
addition, the machine seems sluggish generally. Here's the  
configuration:

iMac G4 800 MHz
768 MB RAM (maxed out)
18.24 GB free on 60 GB hard drive
OS X 10.4.9 with latest update

Disk Utility sees no problems. Suggestions?

Ralph Jones