slow ibook

[perrykibler]

Hello, have an ibook with 10gb hd, 384 RAM, 500mhz cpu, 66 mhz bus speed.

I don't expect this computer to be a speed demon, I have a desktop for that, but I bought it for word processing and word can't even keep up with my typing (nor other programs like omni outliner - so it isn't just word). window redraw is slow and klunky as well.

It isn't always like this, but it seems to slow down after a reinstall (i've done so 3 times). I've still got about 3gb free on a 10gb hd and i don't run classic - all of my programs are native os x.

I've updated prebindings and that doesn't seem to help.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I've followed the obvious ones found on this forum like taking down colors to thousands, turning off os x gui effects like shadows and etc - but i still feel like a fairly new ibook should be able to handle word processing on a default system without having too hard a time.

and i find it odd that it seems to run well after i reformat the drive and start over. i'm doubtful that it is fragmenting, as it seems that this isn't a huge issue on X, but I'll be trying that soon once I reinstall plus optimizer.

any help appreciated. thanks

[sbur]

I noticed the same thing on my G4 400MHz desktop. Turned out that it WAS fragmentation. I defragmented with Norton Speed Disk, and it was much better. It's been running fine ever since. Most notable is the usability of MS Word.

In general, fragmentation may not be a big issue with OS X. On the otherhand, once in a great while it may be an issue.

[jeffo]

perry, I have the same ibook exactly, the same ram and everything. i have had X on it since october when i bought it and i do not have classic on it at all and i have had no troubles at all with it being slow at all, with the exception of diablo II, but that is because of the game being such a processor pig. i have a question about defragmenting. i realize that the os files in X are really just files, but if you boot in 9 or some other os not all the files are visible because of the different structure so i have been really hessitant to defrag the drive yet. I have norton, but it is not the newest version. I am not at home now so i dont for for sure but it is 4.0 i think. would this cause a problem with the fiel structure in X if i used this to defrag?

jeffo

[sbur]

I was using norton utilities v6. I booted into os 9 and defragmented the os X partition. (same as booting from the disk, I suppose.)

I DID back everything up, but noticed no problems at all. The os X partition is HFS+, not unix, so everything was recognized. Even files that had no resource forks were ok.

I have heard a number of horror stories about Norton destroying data, but I've always backed up the important files regularly. Once in a while I'll even backup the whole system. I did this under os 9 as well. (And I've heard of Norton destroying data in an os 9 partition too, so it really is a matter of backing the important stuff up.)

I'm not an expert on disk structure, but I know it helped my system a lot. The installation of os X was really fragmented (about 75%!!!!!!) so I optimized it and all my problems went away. That was well over 6 months ago, and I haven't had a fragmentation problem since. I'm sure milage may vary, but it was good for me.