Run the "nice" command on startup?

Question

Hi all,
Since I've experienced overheating problems, I've dug a little and discovered this wonderful "nice" command, that's currently letting me install Windows 7 on a VM thanks to VirtualBox without turning my logic board into a critter. My question is, is there a way (and a good reason) to run this command right after booting up, say via AppleScript? I haven't noticed any sluggish behavior when running this command, but right now, VirtualBox is running, and my temp censor displays readings oscillating between 60°C and 70°C, far below the 120°C I've noted yesterday, right before my MBP shut down from exhaustion...
So, how-to...?
Message was edited by: Didier Caizergues

Answer 1

Get more memory. My system started paging like crazy when running Virtual PC.
The point of this topic was, how do I automatize this running "nice" in Terminal. I already added Terminal to my Startup Items, but it merely opens at the prompt, and I have to manually enter "nice", then return, to enter "nice mode". Haven't thought of typing "renice" since I started using this function...
You can invoke terminal ( unix ) commands from an applescript program. I am not familiar with nice, but the following applescript file did start up Windows. I could not figure out whether or not the nice command did anything.
The first thing that you need to do is to make the text into an AppleScript program.
Start the AppleScript Editor
/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor.app
In Snow Leopard it's at: /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor
Copy the script text to the Applescript editor.
Save the text to a file as an application and do not check any of the boxes below.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3544/3390737677_645a847e28.jpg?v=0!
If you want access to the script from your Script Menu, move the script (the saved script application file) to your
~/Library/Scripts folder. You can also drag it to your Dock or make an alias for it on the Desktop.
-- Write a message into the event log.
-- To see this output, run from script editor after clicking on Event Log tab.
log "  --- Starting on " & ((current date) as string) & " --- "
set my text item delimiters to ", "
try
   set theFile to escapeString("/Users/mac/Documents/virtual pc version-7.0/Windows XP Professional.vpc7")
   log theFile
   set see to "nice -n 5 open " & theFile
   log "see= " & see
   set results to do shell script see
on error
   display dialog "error results for " & see
end try
on escapeString(thisString)
   set thisString to alterString(thisString, "\\", "\\\\")
   set thisString to alterString(thisString, " ", "\\ ")
   set thisString to alterString(thisString, quote, "\\" & quote)
end escapeString
on alterString(thisText, delim, replacement)
   set resultList to {}
   set {tid, my text item delimiters} to {my text item delimiters, delim}
   try
      set resultList to every text item of thisText
      set text item delimiters to replacement
      set resultString to resultList as string
      set my text item delimiters to tid
   on error
      set my text item delimiters to tid
   end try
   return resultString
end alterString