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I have three inboxes, each with 3-5k messages, and several other folders with over 30k messages and currently mail is only using about 123mb of ram. The indexes however would be large, so that could be impacted by a large mail box. One note, Apple mail no longer uses the mbox format (since the introduction of time machine I believe, but could have been earlier) but rather uses one file per message. Posted by ridogi at 10:47 PM on June 18, 2010 If you want to get another year out the laptop it is worth upgrading the hard drive first, and then the RAM.Īlso, Preview is far superior to Reader in both speed and security. I don't think 2 GB of RAM is limiting you very much based on the applications you're using. It will take a few extra minutes to boot, and when it completes you will want to reboot again normally as the safe boot disables your login items.

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Upgrading to 10.6.4 would also be helpful (after you've made some space as that download is almost 1 GB on its own) and be aware that you can clear the caches by simply restarting and holding down shift. SuperDuper! would help you clone your current drive onto a new one, and iFixit can help out with the actual process of swapping in the drive. Another option is to get an SSD and an external FireWire drive for your iTunes library.īefore buying a new computer you might consider upgrading the hard drive in this one instead. A 7200 RPM drive is a decent compromise between at standard laptop drive (which is 5400 RPM) and an SSD. Look at how much space you are using on your drive now and shop for SSDs that are double that at least. SSDs cost much more per GB than a hard drive, so if you have a lot of large files you may be better off with a hard drive.

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The SSD will be faster, but it will need to have sufficient free space or you'll run into the same problem there. There is also a free alternative called OmniDiskSweeper. WhatSize ($13) is a helpful application that will sort your directories by size to show you which ones are eating up your space. Try to get around 20 or 30 GB free at least. Having only 5 GB of free space is the big red flag in your post. Posted by mikel at 10:27 PM on June 18, 2010 If you can swing it, it's never a bad idea to bump up the amount you have installed. Lastly - Macs (and all computers these days) love RAM. (That's a casual description of what's happening - some smart person could likely say the same thing more accurately than that, but this should be OK to give you a mental model of what's happening.) To do this, the OS writes things temporarily to the HD - and if there's not much space to do that, it takes more time to manage that effectively. When you run out of physical RAM, you get into virtual memory situations, which is normally managed very easily by the OS. Give yourself more free HD space - at least 10% of the total capacity should be free at all times. I agree with ditching Adobe Reader as well - Preview is way faster and lighter on your system.ģ. Check out Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities) to investigate further and learn what is going on.Ģ. If you need the rendering engine, try Camino - otherwise both Safari and Chrome are WAY faster and won't have the same results that you're seeing.

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Firefox is a mess - I don't know anyone on a Mac who still uses it. Stop using Firefox (ever), use Safari or Chrome. Three suggestions, two of which echo what others have written.ġ. when I'm not actually using them? posted by escabeche to Computers & Internet (23 answers total) 16 users marked this as a favorite

Will moving to a new machine with a much larger hard drive solve the problem? Does it matter in this respect if I spring for the solid-state drive? More RAM? Am I going to have to train myself to close up iCal, iTunes, Mail, etc.

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I'm planning to buy a new MacBook Pro soon, and I want to keep it nice and snappy. Possible reasons: I tend to keep a reasonably large number of applications open (iCal, Firefox, Mail, TeXShop, iCal, iTunes, Things, and Adobe Reader open just about all the time, with 8-15 tabs in Firefox.) I also have only about 5GB of hard drive space free. Often dragging a window on the screen takes a long time (seconds, not minutes) to register. E.G: iPhoto takes a long time to open, and when I want to quit, I have to click on iPhoto in the menu bar and wait 10-20 seconds for the pull-down bar to appear.

Over time the machine has gotten steadily more laggy: for the last six months ago it's been beachballing enough to be consistently annoying.

Using a 17' MacBook Pro with 10.6.2, 2GB RAM.