Computer is slow, computer is slow

Question

Why do I get a rotating pinwheel? Is it because I have a lot of photos? I only have about 75 GB not in use. I also have an external hard drive. Thank you.

Answer 1

You should run disk utility to verify the disk and to update your permissions.
You may want to run applejack to clean up your machine.
http://applejack.sourceforge.net/
I know you cannot add more memory, but running Activity Monitor will give you hints at what programs are cpu hogs.
Look at what is happening with your Mac when you run Activity Monitor.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor
Click on the CPU tab on the lower half of the window to see how much time you are using and if any applications are hogging the CPU.
You can gain some understanding of Activity Monitor by  looking at it every once in a while.  Look at the small graph.
Here is how I have my cpu display set up:
Do you need more cpu memory.
Click on System Memory to get statistics on memory usage.  You should have some free memory.
The number to look at is page outs.
Mine is 13397. This means that some of my programs and data had to be written to disk because cpu memory filled up for a time.  It means my programs ran a little slower than they could have.  I could run fewer programs, deal with the slowness, or buy more memory. I'd say you want at least 512meg of memory for 10.4.
If the entry for entry for Page ins/outs is:
Page ins/outs: 29163/0
Notice I have 0 pageouts which says that I am not using my harddrive for extra memory space.  Thus, I have enough memory.
Activity Monitor has a neat feature where it can display a dynamic dock icon.  In Activity Monitor View > Dock icon > Show cpu history.
"Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor :"
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918
Managing Memory
See   Kappy
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8025223#8025223
Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space
http://thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html