Mac Book Pro Problems, Please Help

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medbot

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Hey guys, I'm fairly clueless about Apple products so I figured I'd ask you all for some help. My girlfriend has a Mac Book Pro and it seems that recently it's been getting slower and slower. She almost exclusively uses Photoshop and Illustrator, and she was telling me that last night it was taking her in excess of 20 or 30 seconds just to change layers in PS. Granted, she is working with fairly large image sizes, but that just seems ludicrous. When she moves her work onto my desktop PC it's exponentially faster, but my computer shouldn't be THAT much faster. (a64 3700 @ 2.7, 2gb ram, raptor hd). She also says that the two programs and occassionally Safari will just close randomly. Anyways, I wouldn't know where to start looking to troubleshoot her problems. The only thing I can think of is maybe she has a virus or some kind of malware, but thats just coming from my experiences with PC slowdown. Just to be sure though, does OSX come with any software for dealing with things like that, and if not, can someone suggest one to use (preferrably free, like an AVG for macs). Here's her specs:

Intel Mac Book Pro (the first run, bought it when it was released; the one with the battery problems which she just had replaced)
Intel Core Duo 2GHZ
1 GB ram (she told the guy at the apple store she would only ever use PS and Illustrator and he insisted she would NEVER need more than 1gb :rolleyes: )
86GB hard drive/ 13GB free (with a 20gb Windows partition via Boot Camp for me ;) , could this be a problem?)
OSX 10.4.6

Any input is very much appriciated!
 
Looks like she hasn't been using software update, because 10.4.6 is now updated to 10.4.8.

Also try and do the SMC and EFI updates if not done, those were/are important. Not sure if her version of the MBP needs them, but basically do all the important system updates through software updater. You don't have to worry about iPhoto, iWeb, GarageBand, etc. if you don't use them.

Also keep in mind that Photoshop is not running natively and the PowerPC architecture is being emulated with rosetta---so that's why Photoshop is slow. Once CS3 is released, it's going to absolutely SMOKE because it'll be running natively on the x86 architecture.

It's highly doubtful that she has a virus or malware.
 
Do you think that if I installed the Windows versions of PS and Illustrator onto the Windows partition that they would be faster, since aren't they already written with x86 in mind?
 
Photoshop and Illustrator are slow because they're running in rosetta. There isn't a huge slowdown, but since it is emulation, it slows things down. She ought to look into upgrading RAM because rosetta uses a lot.
 
medbot said:
Do you think that if I installed the Windows versions of PS and Illustrator onto the Windows partition that they would be faster, since aren't they already written with x86 in mind?
Click to expand...

You are correct.

also, I agree with the other poster. She ought to run software update.
 
I have a C2D MBP and I just don't think that 1gig of RAM is enough for Photoshop and Illustrator running under Rosetta. I was having similar problems (although not 20 to 30s) with both apps and various MS Office apps running.

Boot with the OS CD and run Disk Utility to check out the harddrive. And as RLich8 suggested, run all updates.

It probably isn't a virus.

And yes, the Windows versions of the apps will probably run faster. I was planning on trying it myself, but I haven't been able to get XP running on mine yet (SP1 doesn't want to work right, so I have to make an SP2 disk).
 
Run the update (10.4.8 gives Rosetta a massive performance boost) and get more RAM.
 
Considering 1 gig of RAM isn't enough for Photoshop and Illustrator even when running natively (be it OS X or Windows), I'd say upgrade the memory to 2 gigs.
 
Yea, I would definitely go with more RAM, and a software update. If this doesn't work, then, I would try an OS reinstall. Macs don't get any viruses that do that. And there are currently no spyware programs for a mac yet. So, it's probably the OS and the RAM
 
I'm going to ditto the above comments with a reccomended full software update, and if that isn't what you're looking for then a reinstall and some more ram, 2x1gb on the inside would definitely speed it up.
 
but... Hasn't the computer "gotten slower" at these tasks over time?

I'd imagine that it would be generally slow for them, but not decrease in speed as time goes on.

It might be a bad stick of RAM... especially if things are crashing randomly.
 
Arcygenical said:
but... Hasn't the computer "gotten slower" at these tasks over time?

I'd imagine that it would be generally slow for them, but not decrease in speed as time goes on.

It might be a bad stick of RAM... especially if things are crashing randomly.
Click to expand...

That is good insight considering it's not like a Mac to get slower, OS X is designed to avoid this.
 
My imac was doing this and I ended up doing a reformat and installing the OS brand new, and it worked much better
 
Hey thanks a lot for all the replies, we did the software update so maybe that'll help, and she'll get some more ram when she's able. In the meantime I'll just install the Win version of them on that partition and make do.
 
medbot said:
Hey thanks a lot for all the replies, we did the software update so maybe that'll help, and she'll get some more ram when she's able. In the meantime I'll just install the Win version of them on that partition and make do.
Click to expand...

The updates should speed things up significantly considering Rosetta saw speed improvements upwards of 30% in those applications with the 10.4.8 update.
 
Updates will most likely fix the problem...but one question i have is how long has it been since she logged off / shut down? Ive noticed this in 10.4.8 even, that programs that run in rosetta clog up the computer after while. Friend of mine in the IT biz said something about the rosetta librarys needing to be refreshed every so often. Dunno if that has anythign to do with it, but if you still run into problems it wouldnt hurt to log off/on every once in a while.
 
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