acbook programs crashing

[hallatie]

Hello all,
I'm sort of at a stage where I'm not sure if my Macbook might potential explode (or simply die)
I know a lack of ram (1GB) is what's causing the spinning beachball.
But what really annoys me is that a lot of programs lock up and crash.
The main culprits are Word, MSN, Firefox and to a lesser extent, the Finder. Quicktime, Preview and Mercury Messenger also lock up constantly. VLC and iTunes aren't too bad for the most part.

My concern is this, is my Macbook on it's last life (which would result in me losing pretty much all my stuff, although my main concern are my travel pics, but I only have 1 copy on an external drive), or does the lack or ram really kill this machine? When I had 10.5.6, things did lock up, but not as much.
Atleast now I can run youtube vids w/o it stuttering so much.

Thanks in advance

 

[oldmanmac]

1 GB. of ram is not good on anything beyond 10.4.11.Don't know what MB you have but if you intend to keep it max out the ram! In your case I wouldn't keep more than one program at a time. Also, have you run any maintenance such as Onyx or Ice Clean on a regular basis? This will help to reduce the clutter and make things run smoother. As for losing files, use Time Machine to do your backups.A hard drive will eventually fail, just a question of when.

 

[Giaguara]

Plus what is the size of your hard drive, and how much empty space is there? If there's less than 15 % of the space free, you can expect crashes and other problems, so clear space if needed, AND get more RAM, AND run OnyX.

Plus some crash reports of the crashing apps + relevant lines from the moment of the crash from Console would help too.