Running very slow on iMac with Intel Chip

[mjmartin1970]

I manage 3 iMacs with Intel Chips. Office (2004) is running very slow
on all. In fact, all applications are running slow; however, I think
this may be attributed to the fact that all users have entourage open
all the time. I know all the issues with this app needing to run
under Rosetta, and needed more memory, but...

1. Is buying more memory really the only solution? I did this for
one iMac and it really did not see improved performance.

2. I know all of these users have HUGE inbox's. Can this slow things
down and what kind of configuration would help (i.e. does just taking
the e-mails out of the inbox and into folders help or do they need to
be archived and removed from the computer all togehter).

3. Is there any other general maintenance to either the iMac and/or
the Office that could help with performance?

Thanks.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I manage 3 iMacs with Intel Chips. Office (2004) is running very slow
on all. In fact, all applications are running slow; however, I think
this may be attributed to the fact that all users have entourage open
all the time. I know all the issues with this app needing to run
under Rosetta, and needed more memory, but...

1. Is buying more memory really the only solution? I did this for
one iMac and it really did not see improved performance.

2. I know all of these users have HUGE inbox's. Can this slow things
down and what kind of configuration would help (i.e. does just taking
the e-mails out of the inbox and into folders help or do they need to
be archived and removed from the computer all togehter).

3. Is there any other general maintenance to either the iMac and/or
the Office that could help with performance?

Thanks.

Describe what you mean by "very slow". If you are concerned that entourage
is somehow responsible, are other applications "slow" if entourage is not
running? How much RAM is on the machines?

 

[mjmartin1970]

Describe what you mean by "very slow". If you are concerned that entourage
is somehow responsible, are other applications "slow" if entourage is not
running? How much RAM is on the machines?

--
Bob Greenblatt [MVP], Macintosh
bobgreenblattATmsnDOTcom- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Very slow as in the computers are almost worthless - I'm ready to go
back to PCs. The 20" iMac was upgraded to 1 G I believe, and the two
17" iMacs have the original 512 MB. I'm just wondering if Entourage
has the capability of slowing down everything else if it is "running
in the background".

 

[mjmartin1970]

Very slow as in the computers are almost worthless - I'm ready to go
back to PCs. The 20" iMac was upgraded to 1 G I believe, and the two
17" iMacs have the original 512 MB. I'm just wondering if Entourage
has the capability of slowing down everything else if it is "running
in the background".- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I did try shutting down entourage and it did help somewhat, but not a
total solution.

 

[Diane Ross]

Very slow as in the computers are almost worthless - I'm ready to go
back to PCs. The 20" iMac was upgraded to 1 G I believe, and the two
17" iMacs have the original 512 MB. I'm just wondering if Entourage
has the capability of slowing down everything else if it is "running
in the background".

IMHO, you need more RAM. The MB is hardly enough to run your OS much less
applications.

I suggest using iFreeMem to see if it will help you understand what is
happening with your memory.

<http://www.activata.co.uk/products/ifreemem.html>

You can also use Apple's Activity Monitor to view memory usage. Check your
Pagein/outs.

Pagins or pageouts are how many times a page of memory is swapped out from
disk to memory and vice versa. The first number shows how many since your
system has started up . The second the one in brackets is how many
pagein/outs in the last second. If the one in brackets is very large like
50 or above when your system is relatively idle than it is a sign your ram
is being thrashed. The page in/out totals depend on the amount of ram you
have (the larger you the less it has to page) and how long your computer
has been on.

If you were to have the top command running and opened a ton of application
you might see one of the bracketed numbers go up dramatically (can't
remember if it's pageins or pageouts) as a lot of program code is loaded
into memory. Once OS X thinks it knows what stuff it can shuffle off to
store its virtual memory files on disk you may see it going the other way.

Some handy guides on Mac OS X Memory and paging etc:

Memory diagnostics<http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.1.ars/8>
RAM Usage
<http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q2/macos-x-final/macos-x-4.html>
Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space


--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>

 

[Diane Ross]

IMHO, you need more RAM. The MB is hardly enough to run your OS much less
applications.

That should be 512 MB is hardly enough to run your OS much less
applications.


--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

That should be 512 MB is hardly enough to run your OS much less
applications.

Much less Rosetta....isn't that memory-intensive? Even OS X on a
PowerPC without Rosetta wasn't very happy with 512 MB, though.