Q: Problems With Lion (Found So Far).....

How much RAM do you have on the iMac?

How much RAM do you have installed? I suspect that you have 2 GB, I really do. I further suspect that when you have Safari (a notorious RAM hog for years which has got _worse_ with Lion) open you have at least one other RAM hog, such as iTunes, open as well. I further suspect that you have not allowed mds to finish indexing. This means that you will have very low RAM availability, and that in turn means that Safari is going to crawl.

Solutions:

1 get more RAM. If you have 2 GB, get 2 more. If you have 4 GB and your Mac can handle more (if it's a last year's machine it should be able to handle 8 GB) then get at least 2 more.

2 don't open any large apps at the same time as Safari is running.

3 let mds finish indexing.

Your problems with Charter are likely due to:

1 Charter is, how can I put this, less than completely competent. (For those fortunate to not live in their area, you should know that Charter makes Comcast, and AT&T, and even Qwest look good. No, I'm not exaggerating. It could be worse. it could be Cox.)

2 if you're using Safari to access Charter's pages (which are best accessed using MSIE, just so you know... and the last version of MSIE for Mac was released eight or nine years ago and abandoned three or so years after that...) then the fact that Safari is acting up will cause problems with accessing Charter. If you fix the Safari problem you probably will fix the Charter problem, or at least as much as it's going to be fixed. I'd add RAM and see what happens.

If you have MS Office 2004, you're screwed. Office 2004 will not run under Lion. Office 2008 should run fairly well. Office 2011 should not give problems.

My Main problems

1) The beachball turning sign now frequently appears.

2) Safari cannot connect to the server. (This happens quite regularly now compared to my previous snow leopard.)

3) Inertia scrolling does not work on my lion os x after startup, despite (in universal access) the option said "With inertia".

I found a WIFI connection Safari beachball fix here in the discussions that worked great for me.

Settings --> Network --> TCP/IP tab --> Set Configure IPv6 to Link-local only.

I'm not an expert at all on current network configuration but my system was running so badly I figgured I had nothing to loose.  Since I made this change my Safari Lion is back to Snow Leopard speed.

Thanks to you and Steve Strigham for your quick replies. 

iMac was purchased with 4 GB RAM--will take your advice about not running other RAM hogs at the same time.  We had passed on going with 8GB RAM at purchase since the applications running are pretty basic.  (we'r not editing video or major desktop publishing files on the device and no gaming systems at all.)

As for Charter, no offense taken--I use it because charter has the cable monopoly in this part of Madison and I bundle the cable tv/internet/phone together.   We use the charter  mail client since we access email from many locations.  On the iMac since Lion was installed, while working in charter mail, the mail client is almost inoperable.  For example, it is no longer possible to correct typing mistakes using the backspace key--the cursor is frozen.  (This really irks my wife since she uses the iMac to access both personal and work email from home.). She almost beaned me with  the wireless keyboard  when I offered to buy her an iPad instead.

As for MS Office, we have the 2011 version for Mac--I'm hoping there are no issues. 

What is mds indexing?  That term is unfamiliar to me. 

There's a process named mds which does the indexing for Spotlight. If it is not allowed to completely index the drive it will start over from the beginning. If you have a lot of stuff, mds can take a long time to complete the index. If you have more than one drive it will have to index each drive, one at a time. Until it finishes the indexing Spotlight either won't work or won't work properly. Once the iniital index is finished mds will periodically update the index, but that usually doesn't take long. The main problem with mds is that while it runs it takes up a _lot_ of RAM, usually more than 200 MB. I've seen it hit 900 MB.

Your suggested fix appears to have helped---I too am no networking expert. 

and how do you know there are no problems with Lion? clearly if all these people are listing their problems, there are issues. to say they are 'mistaken' is just insulting to everyone here.

damonv wrote:

 

and how do you know there are no problems with Lion? clearly if all these people are listing their problems, there are issues. to say they are 'mistaken' is just insulting to everyone here.

1 if you're going to post in reply to a post from the distant past, quote the post so that everyone else knows what you're talking about. If you don't, you come of as merely being an ignorant ranter.

2 if he has no problems, then he has no problems. Or are you saying that it's not possible to have no problems with Lion? If so, tell me more about your vast powers of omniscience. While you're at it, explain to me why some people I know have no problems with Lion. (_I_ have problems with Lion, but I don't fool myself into thinking that my problems are universal.)

3 quite a few people who have posted here _have_ posted about errors on their part, they merely didn't know that they were making errors. If you choose to be insulted by facts, well, that's your lookout. However, you again come off as being merely an ignorant ranter.

I wasn't talking to you:

Sep 6, 2011 3:28 AM                                                    (in response to etresoft

damonv wrote:

 

I wasn't talking to you:

 

Sep 6, 2011 3:28 AM                                                    (in response to etresoft

Actually, when you elected to post here you were taking to everyone who's subscribed to this thread. If you post in a public place you can expect to get public replies.

And the impression that you're an ignorant ranter has just been reinforced.

Hurl all the insults you like, again I wasn't talking to you, I was responding to a specific post by another user - thank you.

bull**** about the ram I guess. I have 12 GB and still have all kinds of problems as described in this tread.

I would say to those who are having problems to back up their hard drives, erase and install Lion freshly. That is what I have done and there are very few problems that way. I tried installing over Snow Leopard first and had more issues so, I did an erase and install and things have been much smoother.

Thanks to you and others for demonstrating that I'm not alone in my frustrations with Lion. So far, it *****!