Beachball on 3.06 ghz imac

[kockgunner]

My friend has a 3.06 ghz imac with 4 gb of ram that he BTO'd. We were setting it up and installing a printer driver and boot camp and stuff and would get random spinning beachballs for 3 seconds at a time. I saw about 4 beachballs that day. I want this to be a good first mac experience for him and he wants the computer to last a good 5-7 years but what is going on?

 

[nando2323]

My friend has a 3.06 ghz imac with 4 gb of ram that he BTO'd. We were setting it up and installing a printer driver and boot camp and stuff and would get random spinning beachballs for 3 seconds at a time. I saw about 4 beachballs that day. I want this to be a good first mac experience for him and he wants the computer to last a good 5-7 years but what is going on?

Did you let Spotlight do its thing indexing for the first boot up for about an hour or so?

 

[Eidorian]

My friend has a 3.06 ghz imac with 4 gb of ram that he BTO'd. We were setting it up and installing a printer driver and boot camp and stuff and would get random spinning beachballs for 3 seconds at a time. I saw about 4 beachballs that day. I want this to be a good first mac experience for him and he wants the computer to last a good 5-7 years but what is going on?

Why are you worrying about a few beachballs? You're always going to get some.

 

[xraydoc]

For 3 seconds at a time? Not sure what you were doing exactly at the time, but doesn't sound too alarming. Pretend its an hourglass, instead, and you'll be happy it only lasted 3 seconds.

 

[kockgunner]

Did you let Spotlight do its thing indexing for the first boot up for about an hour or so?

i hope it's just that.

For 3 seconds at a time? Not sure what you were doing exactly at the time, but doesn't sound too alarming. Pretend its an hourglass, instead, and you'll be happy it only lasted 3 seconds.

i just expected it not to happen so much on a brand new, topped out imac. i've used macs before and feel there is always a level of control (always able to force quit something, expose works all the time, one freezing app doesn't affect other apps) so it just felt weird not being able to do anything while watching the spinning beachball.

 

[shu82]

beachballs are program specific. So if you are doing something heavy, you can just browse the web or watch a video while you wait.

Man we are spoiled these days. Software improvement drives hardware improvement.

 

[kockgunner]

beachballs are program specific. So if you are doing something heavy, you can just browse the web or watch a video while you wait.

Man we are spoiled these days. Software improvement drives hardware improvement.

i was just installing an hp printer driver and had boot camp assistant open though

 

[Eidorian]

i was just installing an hp printer driver and had boot camp assistant open though

Were you partitioning the hard drive while you were searching for the printer driver?

Not to mention both of those tasks alone cause a lot of disk thrashing. I don't see what the worry or complaint over a beachball is about.

 

[MortonH]

You'll find out over time that the beach ball may last a few seconds or whatever, but the application will almost always complete what it's doing and everything will resume just fine.

In Windows, you could be watching that hourglass for several minutes before you get fed up waiting, force the app to quit and lose all your changes!

Morton

 

[Techguy172]

The Beach Ball isn't necessarily a bad thing it is just telling it's bust at the moment, If it goes away within reasonable time then why worry.

 

[kockgunner]

Were you partitioning the hard drive while you were searching for the printer driver?

Not to mention both of those tasks alone cause a lot of disk thrashing. I don't see what the worry or complaint over a beachball is about.

that might've been it. thanks guys for all your reassuring responses. now if only there were a way to fix the screen bleed at the bottom...