new MBP - endless spinning ball :(

Question

new MBP - endless spinning ball :(

I have had this MBP for about six months. It is a 1.83 Ghz Intel Core Duo, OS10.4.8. I had the spinning ball problem from the beginning, so I upgraded my memory to 1.5 GB. That has helped only slightly.

Lately I have been using it more professionally, more often - Photoshop CS2, pretty big files back and forth, scanning, managing files, etc. I am encountering the spinning ball constantly: navigating between files, changing file sizes, opening files, and especially working with the Bridge (I think the File Browser was better, at least performance wise).

I am really, really disppointed with this machine. It is not fast, it does not perform well, and most frustratingly, as I've stated, I get the hanging spinning ball all the time. It feels like the six year old PC laptop my wife finally got rid of, not a state-of-the-art Mac laptop.

I called Apple a few months back and they said the warranty was only for hardware, and I had to troubleshoot software issues on the Apple site.

I also bought this machine in the States, and brough it here to the UK. (I don't know if that effects my warranty).

I can't work professionally with this product, I thought Apple was better than this - I also have a G5 desktop machine which works pretty well.

What should I do??

G5, dual 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

G5, dual 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

G5, dual 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

G5, dual 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

G5, dual 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jan 26, 2007 12:21 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Jan 26, 2007 1:00 PM in response to Christopher Davis2

Sounds like you are experiencing the Rosetta effect.

CS2 does not run natively on Intel Macs. I deal with this every day. :-\

Best bet would be to upgrade to CS3 as soon as it comes out. Also you can get the Photoshop CS3 beta for free from Adobe right now.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 26, 2007 1:05 PM in response to Mudcrutch99

thanks for the reply. I would believe that, but the slowed performance is with all applications such as the Finder. I only mentioend Photoshop because I am using that right this moment. (Bridge keeps crashing too).

With the Finder, it's an all around slow performance, primarily hanging with opening various applications and switching between apps.

If I just open a browser and click around it's not so bad, but once I start opening multiple things, switching around, which is all pretty standard usage...

Reply

Answer 3

Jan 26, 2007 1:21 PM in response to Christopher Davis2

yep, switching between CS apps (and non-native apps in general) and the finder it is very slow.

What brand RAM did you install?

Reply

Answer 4

Jan 26, 2007 1:33 PM in response to Mudcrutch99

Wow that's weird if PS CS2 has that effect on the overall system performance, and not just itself. I bought the RAM upgrade from the Apple website, I don't know exactly what "brand" it is.

Just to make it slightly more elusive, the slowness did occur before upgrading to CS2, when using PS 7. Then I upgraded the RAM and as I recall the performance improved a bit. Now with CS2, even with the additional RAM it's slow again. With computers it's allllwwaays something.

Maybe I'll check out that beta of CS3. Are betas generally safe? Do you need to purchase a commercial upgrade later? Any other thoughts?

Thanks a lot.

Reply

Answer 5

Jan 28, 2007 5:16 PM in response to Christopher Davis2

PS7 is a non-native app. So it ran via Rosetta as well.

PS CS3 is pretty solid. I have been using it at work and home with no problems. It will become non-active shortly after Adobe officially releases the final product.

The issue for me still remains that I frequently switch between Illustrator, InDesign and PS -- so the PS beta is only a small piece of the performance problem :-\

Reply

Answer 6

Jan 29, 2007 1:39 AM in response to Mudcrutch99

So I should download the CS3 beta asap? I also have a educaion version of CS2, so does the CS upgrade work with that?

Who is this rosetta? Is she cute?

Reply

Answer 7

Jan 29, 2007 1:40 AM in response to Christopher Davis2

sorry for the typos... education version, and does the CS3 upgrade work with education versions?

thx

Reply

Answer 8

Jan 29, 2007 9:46 AM in response to Christopher Davis2

Yes, it should work fine according to Adobe.

(I have the regular)

Reply

Answer 9

R. Berardi

Level 4

2,036 points

Jan 29, 2007 11:02 AM in response to Christopher Davis2

you should not have the beachball that much - something is wrong.

go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor

at the top of the activity monitor, click on All Processes - than click on % CPU
is anything hogging your processor?

also, boot up from you os x install disk, while holding down the d key - this is the hardware test - run the extended version

also, repair your disk permissions
go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
in the column in the left, choose your hard drive
at the top, click on the First aid tab
at the bottom , choose Repair disk permissions.

also, do you leave your system on 24/7 without it going to sleep? If you don't, than your cron scripts don't get a chance to run:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107388

Reply

Answer 10

Boece

Level 5

6,264 points

Jan 29, 2007 11:22 AM in response to Christopher Davis2

Christopher, as others have mentioned, your problems are due to running legacy PPC apps via Rosetta emulation. And these are substantial programs with big RAM and CPU appetites.

Rosetta effectively doubles their RAM demands and cuts their performance by about 50% due to emulating PPC instructions on the fly.

The spinning balls are due to page outs in the Virtual Memory system, which uses the Hard Drive to make up for too little real RAM.

The more legacy apps you are running in Rosetta, the more virtual memory is used -- and this affects the responsiveness of all applications, even Intel native or Universal ones.

The solutions are: 1) run fewer legacy PPC apps; 2) get more RAM; 3) make sure you have adequate free space (at least 10% free) on your hard drive to allow VM to work efficiently.

If you fire up Utilities > Activity Monitor you can see which PPC legacy apps are running. Try to get that down to none. Activity Monitor will also tell you how many page-outs are occuring in Virtual Memory. My guess is: alot!

Reply

Answer 11

R. Berardi

Level 4

2,036 points

Jan 29, 2007 11:23 AM in response to Boece

Boece, I am sure that running non native apps is a big culprit here - but chris said that even the finder is slow, on its own, which lead to my previous post.

Reply

Answer 12

Jan 29, 2007 11:30 AM in response to R. Berardi

hi thanks for the reply.
I have repaired permissions, and i am looking at the activity monitor. Sitting idle, nothing is taking up more than 2-5%. It moves kind of rapidly, even when idle, so I don't really know what the heck it's doing. It's going back and forth between PS and a "kernel_task" and "WindowServer", taking up b/w 2-5%. Don't ask me what that all means.

I will work on a few things and see if performance is any better, and will attempt the hardware test. I did that on my G5 once, it didn't uncover much.

Reply

Answer 13

R. Berardi

Level 4

2,036 points

Jan 29, 2007 11:39 AM in response to Christopher Davis2

run your cron scripts, it is very easy to do within the terminal (the link was attached)

the hardware test can find "bad hardware", including ram - which can be a leading cause of the beachball.

btw, your cpu usage sounds fine.

Reply

Answer 14

Boece

Level 5

6,264 points

Jan 29, 2007 11:48 AM in response to Christopher Davis2

Check the page-outs vs page-ins in Activity Monitor.

If page-outs are greater than 10-15% of page-ins, your VM system is working too hard and you need more RAM -- or fewer programs demanding it. (You have to click on the "System Memory" tab in AM to see this info.)

Reply

Answer 15

Jan 29, 2007 12:16 PM in response to Christopher Davis2

I have now run the "cron scripts".

I'll have to give it a few hours before I am working again and can test any results, hopefully improvements.

Clicking around Safari everything seems fine, but once again, PS triggers it, then theings start slowing elsewhere.

By the way thanks for all the input.

Reply