Snow leopard vs leopard ?

You can erase and install Leopard and then restore from you backup, but the problem isn't with Snow Leopard. You've got something incompatible with it and you'll have to provide more details to determine what is causing the problems.

La77am wrote:
i used to love my mac because it never lagged and i never had to wait for 2 minutes for safari to get out of its lag. but now that i upgraded to snow leopard my laptop is so laggy. it feels like windows !! everything lags and i mean it everything.

How full is your internal HD? You should have at least 15% or 15 gb or so free at all times. That's one of the main causes of performance problems.

Via +Disk Utility+ (in your Applications/Utilities folder), run +*Repair Permissions*+ and +*Verify Disk*+ on your internal HD.

Are you sure all your 3rd-party apps are compatible with Snow Leopard?

See the *Troubleshooting performance problems* section of this article: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/performance.html

can i downgrade to leopard ?

Do you have a backup from when you were on Leopard, and do you mind losing everything you've added or changed since then?

Pondini asked one of the two questions I always ask when someone complains about the speed of their newly upgraded to Snow Leopard computer. The other is "How much RAM do you have?" Snow Leopard is much happier with 2GB than 1GB.

DItto the above.

Forever having to "force quit"

Keynote: often quits unexpectedly when hitting the "Play Slideshow" button.
Numbers: quits when trying to open certain templates.
Pages: refuses to open certain documents that I created pre Snow Leopard (problems where I've used Hoefler text apparently.)
I can't Trash anything "because the item User Data is in use"
Safari is much slower
I see the spinning beachball far too often for my liking.
Telephone calls to the support desk that once rendered instant answers now get vague responses that don't sort the problems I rang about.
Feeling a might dispirited. After two years of effectively being an unpaid sales rep for Apple (such was my enthusiasm for my Mac) I tend to stay quiet these days.

La77am wrote:
i have most of the things you just said. i wish i never upgraded!

Pardon me, but what are you doing about it?

If you'd like some help, please answer the questions dwb and I asked, and/or follow the links provided.

Or, if you'd rather, restore your last Leopard backup.

Between home and work I have quite a menagerie of Macs: 3 notebooks, a mini, 3 iMacs, and a MacPro I just inherited from my supervisor who just got a new one. Excluding the MacPro I upgraded all of them from 10.5 to 10.6 without a hitch. One of the work iMacs had only 1GB and as I fully expected, it was not a happy camper until I upgraded it to 2GB. Now it is humming along. However, my main work computers were not happy with just 2GB because of my work habits. I tend to keep quite a few programs running at once and I jump into Windows a couple times a week using Parallels Desktop. Parallels and WinXP alone nearly overwhelm a computer with only 2GB, let alone the rest of the programs I want to run.

So first things first, let us know how much RAM and free hard drive space you have so we can help you get to the bottom of your problem.

With 2GB of RAM you should be able to run several programs without beachballing but some programs are RAM needy, Photoshop and MS Word are two such. Also, I've noticed that Safari does get bogged down and benefits from a shutdown.

So a couple questions. When your computer is first started up and your normal set of programs has launched, is the computer slow right away or does it become slow over time? The former suggests that your 2GB isn't enough, the latter could mean several things. It would help if you actually did restart your computer and started up the Activity Monitor first thing. With the Activity Monitor running pay attention to two things: The number of page outs in the RAM tab (this will help tell us if your RAM is sufficient) - and the CPU usage - this will tell us which applications/services are taking up the cycles.

Try starting in safe mode - hold the shift key. This will perform a number of functions which may help. Or not. But let my assure you, this is not normal and with 2GB of RAM and plenty of free drive space your computer should be starting faster than it did and you shouldn't be experiencing any slower function.

For more on improving performance, see:

Mac Maintenance Quick Assist,
Mac OS X speed FAQ,
Speeding up Macs,
Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
Essential Mac Maintenance: Get set up,
Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines, and
Myths of required versus not required maintenance for Mac OS X for information.

La77am wrote:
i used to love my mac because it never lagged and i never had to wait for 2 minutes for safari to get out of its lag. but now that i upgraded to snow leopard my laptop is so laggy. it feels like windows !! everything lags and i mean it everything. is any1 else having the same problem ? can i downgrade to leopard ?

Are you using incompatible hack plug-ins with Safari? Have you checked activity monitor to see if there are any PowerPC programs running, if so, get rid of them. You have other problems with your Mac because Snow Leopard is the fastest version of OS X I have ever used. Perhaps you should back up your data, reformat your drive, and re-install the OS and restore your data.