OS X 10.7 Lion - Slow to boot, run, launch Safari etc. etc.

I have serious regrets about installing Lion. If I thought I could go back to Snow Leopard without any risk of losing all my data, I would do it immediately.

After installing, there was a seriosly long boot up. I thought nothing of this as it is not uncommon after an OS upgrade. But then I tried to launch Mail only to find that it tried to import my accounts only to crash. After several attempts I used the new Mail Contacts & Calendars preference pane to delete all the account information. I relaunched Mail successfully and then imported the accounts via the File menu. Everything was acomplete mess and it took a few hours to sort all the mail into the correct mailboxes and folders. The rules I had set up were ineffective and foldershad been created all over the place. Not a good start.

I then discovered that I could no longer connect to my Time Machine volume on my ReadyNAS Duo because the version of AFP is no longer supported.

Having played around for a while and noticed lots of little annoyances - like bits of screensaver images breaking through as a video goes from a window to full screen, I though maybe I should reboot.

Not so long ago, I timed how long it would take to boot up in Snow Leopard to the login screen in terms of gearwheel spins - it used to take 19 spins, then for some reason it went up to 58. I managed to reduce it to 30 by carrying out a number of proceedures, exactly which I forget now.

Under Lion, it took 185 spins of the gearwheel to reach the login screen and seemed to take forever after that. I figured out how to prevent windows from being restored in the General preference pane and deselected the resore windows option when I rebooted. I repaired permissions, zapped the PRAM etc. etc. and decided to time startup wityh my iPhone stopwatch, as follows:

Start: 00.00

Chime: 00.02

Apple: 00.14

Apple + Geerwheel: 00.19

Login screen: 01.38

Desktop: 02.20 (allowing about ten seconds to click my account and enter password).

Mail (startup item): 02.54

Safari (launched manually when Mail was complete at 02.54): 04.40 stopped bouncing in Dock. No running indicator in Dock and could not be launched by clicking in Dock - needed to be forced to quit.

On relaunch, Safari took over two minutes to launch, then was unresponsive for a further two minutes. Pages did not load then partially loaded before stopping again. It was probably about six or seven minutes before I was able to load a page fully.

I am experiencing a lot of SBoDs doing the simplest thing, like opening folders, and I generally get the feeling that something is amiss. As I said at the start, I wish I had stuck with Snow Leopard. I think that Lion is an over hyped widget environment which does nothing worth the hassle it has caused and continues to cause.