OS X feeling very, very slow at times

[exscape]

The short version: My computer feels reaaaally slow at times. Tasks such as switching between apps and typing text can take 5-15 seconds at its worst. See sig for specs. Clean install, have repaired permissions/disk and cleaned up etc.

 

Long version:

 

OK, I've had this problem for a long time, but it seems to be getting worse. In any case, it's getting more annoying!

Specs: see sig.

Symptoms: Simple operations are *really* slow. Things like Cmd+B for bold text and type a sentence... Sometimes I finish typing before it appears on screen. Switching windows, opening simple documents, starting apps... etc. Things that should be fast can take a long time. At its worst, creating a tab in firefox can take 15 seconds, but it's not always that bad.

Oh! And my Quicksilver hotkeys for iTunes (such as next track, play/pause, lower volume) can also be REALLY slow. Again, at its worst, it takes 15 seconds to react. By that time I've usually switched to iTunes to skip the track myself, but soon thereafter the hotkey press goes through and switched tracks again. Grrrr.

 

It seems to happen pretty randomly, but I *never* consider my computer really fast, just "really bad" or "good enough".

Running Leopard, 10.5.2, but I've had smaller problems all along (since 10.4.8 IIRC). Several clean installs since then. I haven't noticed any CPU spikes or such, but I'm not completely sure where to look except activity monitor/top when it happens - and by then, the beachball is spinning and I can't start the monitoring app before it's too late.

 

According to top, iTunes seem to use ~4% CPU (while playing an MP3) and firefox ~5-8% - while idle! A bit odd, but surely not the explanation to my problem.

 

Oh, and yeah, I have repaired permissions (which is voodoo anyway), the startup disk, cleaned up with OnyX and probably a bunch of things I'm forgetting. 1GB of free memory at the moment, and to be honest it feels great right now. I wonder if having no free memory, but plenty inactive, makes OS X slow... It shouldn't, but still. It's really snappy now, probably better than it's been in a long time. Ugh.

 

Any advice is appreciated

 

Edit: I forgot, Xbench results: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=274082

[SpeedfreaK]

and the problem is still there after a clean install? man, there's something wrong with your mbp. is it still under waranty?

[exscape]

It's been a while since I reinstalled (at the Leopard release), but I'm pretty darn sure I had at least some slowness long before that.

I just had the slow hotkey thing, with 1GB *free* RAM (recently rebooted) and 0 page outs, so it's not a lack of RAM for sure.

 

No warranty. I'm not sure it's a hardware problem to be honest, it could be caused by pretty much *any* program I have running most of the time. I'm unsure how to figure out which one, except removing them all and adding them back one at a time... Which would be a pretty huge pain.

 

Edit: The problem hasn't reoccured since I started keeping track of my memory usage (via the activity monitor dock icon -> show memory usage). It appears to only happen after I've used up all my memory (i.e. using VMware). It does NOT only happen when I'm out of memory though, which is weird! I can have 512-1024MB free and it still happens... I suppose it's because something semi-important gets swapped out.

 

RAM is cheap, so instead of avoiding VMware I'll probably grab a 2GB stick for ~$75 to get 2+1 = 3GB instead (the max for my MBP generation).