surogat70 wrote:
If this is a common problem and it is known that Mountain Lion is more memory demanding than prior OS versions, than it is of course helping.
It isnt a common problem. That's what I and Thomas have been trying to tell you. The fact that these forums have frequent threads about ML being slow is an accretion of different causes having the same effect. i.e., in plain English, many things will slow down any OS, and each user has to figure out what is going on in their case. To blame it blandly on 'the way the OS works' is simply false and unhelpful. It's not the OS, its the OS in combination with something else the user has on their system, or on hardware.
How do I know it's not inherently the OS? Because not only have I tested ML since its first beta release, not only have I (along with many others on these forums) helped to solve the 'slow running' complaint from many users by tracking it down (more often than not) to outdated or incompatible 3rd party software, but - as I have already said - if it was inherent to the OS the chorus of complaints would be deafening.
Both for the OP and yourself (your complaint that your system was only barely usable with 8GB sounds like you have some problems you're not aware of), you might also try this free analytical tool from etresoft (another ASC forum member). This can help see what's being loaded on your system at boot up time and to identify problems. If you're not sure what you're looking at when you see the results, post them in a thread for advice.
Here's the link to that free tool:
http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck