Why is my MacBook Pro slow? (2010 model)

Question

I have a 2010 MacBook pro 2.26 GHZ, 2GB Ram. Let me detail a bit of background first.

I had it running Leopard, and had the same issue with it running slow. I got annoyed with how it was running, so I wiped the HDD. I used DBAN on it, then installed Leopard from disk, then purchased Lion. I did this 2 days ago.

The only apps I have on my Mac, that I've installed, right now are:

• FireFox
• Logic Pro 9
• Native Instruments Komplete

And that's the only applications I've installed. Currently the only apps I have running are:

• Firefox
• iMessage

In the activity monitor FireFox is using 560MB ram with 2 tabs open. I get the same when I use Safari, or Chrome.

When I switch applications on the Mac, or even switch tabs on FireFox, I get the spinning wheel. When I open a new application it takes a long time to open. I can't have anything else open if I'm browsing the web because it's painfully slow switching tabs, and even rending pages is slow (it's not an Internet issue).

The Mac seems to be always Indexing. When it's indexing it's not even usable.

I can't understand why this is happening. I have an older iMac that performs better than this Mac. I'm ready to sell it, I've had enough of Mac laptops, they just seem to cause constant headaches.

There is no reason why a web browser should be consuming so much RAM with two tabs open (one being bit.ly the other being Stack Exchange).

Can anyone offer some advice? If you need any information from me leave a comment and I'll update the post.

Answer 1

Aside of getting more RAM, you can do following.

Disabling the flash in your Firefox will save you some.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/

To your third question: On my OS x 10.8 the "kernel" alone uses 1 gig already!! so you are definitely running short on RAM.

Just get another 2 Gig and see it fly.

Answer 2

I can't understand why this is happening. I have an older iMac that performs better than this Mac. I'm ready to sell it, I've had enough of Mac laptops, they just seem to cause constant headaches.

Without having some degree of understanding in the field of computer science or programming, this would be a little difficult to explain.

There is no reason why a web browser should be consuming so much RAM with two tabs open (one being bit.ly the other being Stack Exchange).

The reason is that the programmers have an expectancy of computers to be kept up to date as they build more resource hungry and intensive software. Times have changed and people need to keep up to date. The minimum amount of RAM I would suggest is 4GB as you are using OS X 10.8 which is a 64-bit native system. 2GB is OK if you are using a 32-bit system. Most applications built for OS X these days are of the understanding that you probably have 4GB of RAM that can be used and allocated.

Answer 3

As mentioned in the other answers, 2Gb. is quite tight for OS X (or Windows, for that matter) nowadays. Every time you switch apps, your OS is having to hit the swap file on disk to store the memory of the "outgoing" program, and loading the memory for the new program. And of course, HDs are slow.

Since we're on the subject, by the way, it wouldn't be out of place to check if your HD is dying. Go to Disk Utility and see if it passes the SMART test; download also something like Smart Utility and run it. A HD with failing sectors might run slower than usual too.