don't "switch"

[habilis]

About a month ago I bought a new Power Mac G4 Dual 1ghz, and ever since that fateful purchase I have been INCREDIBLY dissatisfied with every aspect of this machine. First I should say that I use a G4 450MHz at work for 8+ hours a day and am quite familiar with the Macintosh system, have been using for the last 5 years along with windows. What Apple doen't tell you is that Jaguar is actually a Turtle. At first I was dismayed with how slow folder navigation was and the fact that the finder crashed about once every hour. The other thing that bugged me was the disgustingly long page times and general lock-ups that plagued the simplest of tasks and navigation. In particular was my folders full of digital photography images - about 2-300 jpegs per folder ranging in file size from about .5 to 1.3MB, opening that folder in the finder window would bring the OS to a TOTAL halt for about 30-40 seconds. In Windows ME with FULL PREVIEWS on that same folder took less than 5 seconds and didn't lock up the system while it paged. I thought that it must be a lack of RAM, so I upgraded to a full Gig of Apple-spec RAM only to be disappointed again when it hardly made a hair of difference- now it took 28 seconds insted of 30. I called Apple and they said they you CAN'T turn off Virtual Memory!?!?! I looked at the Process viewer and found that "Jaguar" was using 90% Virtual and only 10% Physical RAM for almost all apps - That's Pathetic. What we have here is a dumbing down of the OS as well as a slowing down of all that's associated with it. Sure the thing runs like a speed demon when I run in Classic but that's not why I bought the machine. I think we need to be asking ourselves more fundemental questions about OS's - for example, shouldn't a newer "More Improved" OS, and especially one named for the FASTEST LAND MAMMAL ON EARTH be Faster??? and maybe a little more stable??? The truth is my G4 450MHz at work is easily more stable and gets the job done just as well as this waste of money I'm stuck with now. It has nothing to do with a Hardware Failure. I ran all the memory and hardware tests and then went to Compucenter just to try out the same one there to make sure - same B.S. So my hat's off to Apple for pulling the wool over so many people's eyes. And it's a crying shame that all these poor devout Mac people out there(that used to be me) are in a total state of denial about how much Apple now sucks. Apple took every that was good about Macs out of OSX and put in everything that was bad about Windows - THANKS. We need to face this problem head on, accept that Apple's Glory Days are over, and go get yourself a copy of XP. By the way, If anyone knows how to turn off Virtual Memory without the aid of a Haxie, I'd like to know how to do that before I put this thing up on eBay.

[symphonix]

I suspect you might actually have something wrong with your system. I'd suggest running the standard batch of checks and balances, including the hardware diagnostic CD, and verifying the hard disk and permissions. Even on my iBook 500 with only 128mb RAM, I can scroll through a folder of 320 JPEGs - with previews at full size - with no real delay under 10.2.2. At worst it will take five seconds to open the folder, but then scroll nicely.

It could possibly be a bad RAM chip. That would explain the virtual memory figures - which are far from right - as well as the crashing.

If you do find anything wrong with your system, you should be able to get it corrected under warranty.

[MacLuv]

[kendall]

How did you determin Jaguar "was using 90% Virtual and only 10% Physical RAM for almost all apps" through Processor Viewer? I'm dying to know!

[theed]

Your keyboard is broken too. The return key isn't making new paragraphs like it's supposed to. :-)

The Finder has some suck issues, I agree there. And if you can't feel the difference between Mac OS X and XP, by all means go with XP. It runs on cheaper hardware. Me, I'd give up computers before I lived on Windows. It's really that bad in my opinion. And don't think I have my eyes closed, I just get bothered to a different degree by different things. But the Finder, yeah, it's not very multitasking. I have fishing line with more threads than the Finder.

As for the VM thing ... you really need to come up to speed on how VM works in a modern OS before you criticize the lack of a turn it off switch. It's pretty much essential in a protected memory environment. Also, what's allocated is not necessarily swapped out, it's known to be empty and will likely never be used, so it doesn't occupy expensive RAM. In fact it's not really in VM either, it's just preallocated in case it's needed.

And I could be off here, but isn't the Cheetah the fastest land animal / land mammal? Cheetah was 10.0, right? If you want your code names to reflect reality, then it should make you happy that Copland is dead in more ways than one. ... oh I'm gonna do some time in Hell for that one.

Anyway, let us know when your Mac goes up on eBay. If I can convince myself that my dual 450 isn't keeping up with me any more I may be in the market for a faster machine that runs something that's not Windows.

running top in the terminal gives some lovin' that process viewer does not, btw. ... he he he, top says I have ~8G of VM allocated right now.

[Sogni]

Hmmm... this sounds eerily familiar...

You wouldn't, by any chance, be using Unix File System (UFS) instead of Mac OS Extended (HFS+)?

UFS causes problems (unless you know EXACTLY why you want UFS) - one of the biggest problems with UFS is GUI speed.

Switch to HFS+ and be happy.

[MacLuv]

[habilis]

Looks like I'm not so smart when it comes to mammals or punctuation after all... Anyway, Tormente, how do I find what file system I'm using? I did a search in mac help and came up dry(as usual).

P.S. Does anybody know if I can legally advertise what apps I have installed on this machine when(and if) I put it up on ebay? I intend to say "All software installed and working on machine, however, I keep all software installation discs and manuals" This would infer probable tomfoolery, and that I'm going to install them on another machine... or is that gonna be illegal?