Why is my PB going so slow?

Question

Over the last few weeks, my Powerbook G4 has been running incredibly slowly. At first I thought it was just Microsoft Entourage email program. Or Firefox webbrowser. But it's everthing. Any time I want to do something, it takes ages: for windows to pop up, for programs to open, for finder to show folder contents. (Both Firefox and Safari are also slow - and it's not my connection.)
My iPhoto is getting to be huge - nearly 20 GB. But all of the above happens even if I don't have iPhoto open. I average between having 5-15 GB of free space on the hard disk.
I have 512 MB of SDRAM. (It hasn't given me a problem before now.)
Is the computer's age starting to catch up with it, or what? Any advice?

Answer 1

First, you need to keep 10% or more free disk space on your hard drive for systems usage. Less than that can really slow your system down.
You may be memory constrained. In Applications/utilities on your hard drive, bring up the Activity Monitor, and on the system memory tab, look at page ins/outs. If page outs are greater than 10% to 15% of page ins, your system could use more memory for what you run. When there isn't enough physical memory, the system will write memory to your hard drive, to make room for something else. If it does this alot, it impacts performance, and if there's not enough space on the hard drive, it really impacts performance.
As our Powerbooks age, others have had the same symptom of things appearing to slow down or the system being busier more often. Some have found some relief using a tool like OnyX, which you can download from http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/download.html . For safety when using any disk utility, backup your data first, then run the tasks under the cleaning and maintenance tabs.