i think i can, i think i can the little ibook says:

T

tinroots

Registered
Hola, I have been working with several, rather lots of large psd and indd files at the same time, switching back and forth, updating, adding etc. I generally don't have any other 'major' apps open at the same time, but I would like to have Illustrator in there! After a while, everything sslllows down. I get the spinning beach ball all the time, for even switching apps. It reminds me of when I had a beige ppc and had to restart it after intensive photoshop or illustrator workings.
Anyway, what do I do? Is there a way to purge something? I don't know if that's the right word. I've restarted a few times, but I thought that OS X didn't work that way somehow? Obviously I'm well versed at this, sorry. I don't keep too many large files open at the same time, but sometimes 3 or 4 psd files while 1 or 2 indd files are open to edit parts of a book, etc. InDesign seems to respond the worst; sometimes key commands won't work anymore or it takes 3 or 4 minutes to save or close files.
I'm using a iBook 1.42 G4 w 1GB ram + running 10.4.6 (and yes I know it's not the biggest or bestest, but it works well after I restart... and then begins to get bogged down.) I feel like I repair permissions more often than one is supposed to: every couple of days... is that too often?
Also when this begins to happen, windows from one application will stay 'in front' when I've already switched applications. ie: finder windows will be on top of Camino, while I'm typing in Camino.
Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks!
 
You can find out whether it is running out of memory by opening a terminal and entering the command "top".

Code: 
Processes:  60 total, 3 running, 57 sleeping... 197 threads            22:32:42
Load Avg:  0.25, 0.22, 0.26     CPU usage:  3.5% user, 15.7% sys, 80.9% idle
SharedLibs: num =  179, resident = 36.6M code, 3.59M data, 5.59M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num =  9512, resident =  217M + 9.07M private,  103M shared
PhysMem:  71.1M wired,  238M active,  153M inactive,  463M used, 48.8M free
VM: 6.02G +  123M   75485(0) pageins, 43955(0) pageouts

  PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE
  416 top         11.8%  0:01.29   1    18    21   460K   308K  2.32M+ 27.0M 
  414 tcsh         0.0%  0:00.04   1    15    20   404K   548K  1.50M  31.1M
  413 login        0.0%  0:00.02   1    16    34   144K   320K  1.66M  26.8M
  411 Terminal     0.8%  0:00.65   4    91   209  1.97M  9.68M  16.9M+  143M 
  409 Adobe Phot   0.3%  0:08.76   2    87   802  29.2M  51.0M  38.1M   305M
  408 mdimport     0.0%  0:00.18   3    61    42   732K  3.37M  2.19M  39.2M
  407 mdimport     0.0%  0:00.54   4    66   196  2.20M  6.90M  4.88M  52.7M
  280 DashboardC   0.0%  0:00.82   4    87   228  4.27M  5.29M  6.79M   140M

Of interest is the bit that reads "Pageins" and "Pageouts".

Each time a program calls something from memory, the OS has to find it. If it is currently in RAM, then that is a "pagein", and if it has to retrieve it from the hard-drive then that is a pageout.

Ideally the number of pageouts should be around 10-20% of the number of pageins. If it is more than 50% and you will see a huge improvement with more RAM. If the number of pageouts exceeds the number of pageins, then the computer is running *desperately* short of memory and as such you either add RAM or decrease the demand on memory.

The example above shows me that I really need a bit more RAM. Ah, well, it'll have to wait.
 
Also keep in mind that you should have a couple of GB harddrive space free! If you have only around 1 GB free, this will _seriously_ slow down your iBook. You'll notice that after a reboot you have more space free on the drive, but again, after you really start working, it goes down. Make sure there's enough free space.
 
Thanks! I'll try the top command, and see what's happening. As far as free space, I have 27 GB free; even while I'm working on large files. I guess I'm also surprised, that while they are large files, they are not insanely large. The photoshop files I'm working on do not exceed 24 MB ever. Where as I've worked on larger than 70 MB files before and would understand if there was slowness from that... Am I just expecting too much? Thanks again.
 
Well 27GB of free hard drive space should be enough for anybody.

Why did I feel a cold shiver when I said that?

The Top command should show you if there are any applications that are running improperly and eating up your resources, too. I had a similar problem a few months back, and used "top" to trace it back to Symantec Antivirus. I uninstalled that, and it now runs fine.
 
Hey there, Thanks so much - esp. for explaining what you recommended! (I'm trying to learn, believe it or not) So I'm running just a few programs at the moment, and things are slowing down significantly and I checked the terminal.... uhm.. this is what it says:
181569(1) pageins, 164894(0) pageouts

not good hum?
pooo.

So is restarting my best options in these circumstances?

You said:
"The Top command should show you if there are any applications that are running improperly and eating up your resources, too. I had a similar problem aa few months back, and used "top" to trace it back to Symantec Antivirus. I uninstalled that, and it now runs fine."

How do I know when it's running improperly? Is it about the %CPU usage?
or the other things listed that I don't have a clue what they mean?

Thanks again!!!!
 
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