Macbook air gets slow

[joanne125]

My mac gets slow everytime I watch videos on youtube or any website. It can start running great but then the video starts jumping and the computer gets very slow and I have to close all the websites that are opened.
I need help!

Macbook Air info:
Mac OS X Version 10.6.5
Processor 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

 

[aristobrat]

Is this the new model of the MacBook Air that came out a few weeks ago, or is it the prior generation?

If it's the prior generation, have you updated your Adobe Flash player? The newer version does a lot better with most Macs than the previous versions.

 

[Corax]

My mac gets slow everytime I watch videos on youtube or any website. It can start running great but then the video starts jumping and the computer gets very slow and I have to close all the websites that are opened.
I need help!

Macbook Air info:
Mac OS X Version 10.6.5
Processor 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Better yet, use the extension Youtube5 for Safari. Amazing results!

 

[joanne125]

Is this the new model of the MacBook Air that came out a few weeks ago, or is it the prior generation?

If it's the prior generation, have you updated your Adobe Flash player? The newer version does a lot better with most Macs than the previous versions.

I have the prior generation. Where I can update my Adobe Flash Player? That will solve my problem?

 

[Hakstern626]

i have the same problem with this my youtube like loads and stops loading and ill have too close program and open it up and load again. it plays then stops loading and then i gotta wait 5 mins then the loading returns.

 

[aristobrat]

This page should have a link to the latest version:
http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

If you're not running v10.1 of Flash, this update will help some.

 

[phairphan]

i have the same problem with this my youtube like loads and stops loading and ill have too close program and open it up and load again. it plays then stops loading and then i gotta wait 5 mins then the loading returns.

I've had this problem on all of my Macs, including my Mac Pro. It's definitely not an issue of the machine being underpowered. It's a Flash and/or Youtube problem. I'm going to check out the Youtube5 extension. Thanks, Corax!

 

[Rizvi1]

My wife's 1.6ghz MacBook Air (bought Spring 2009) has been a pain ever since she owned it. I'm going to check out the youtube5 extension

 

[ct2k7]

I'm converting over from Windows, and I am not seeing any issues as described in the thread.

 

[darrellishere]

Try getting cool-book. after all your cpu is being throttled which hinders hd flash playback!

 

[johannnn]

If you have the old Macbook Air you REALLY need Coolbook unfortunately.

 

[Scottsdale]

If you have the old Macbook Air you REALLY need Coolbook unfortunately.

Not true at all. The original MBA is the only one that had problems with its Merom CPU and Intel IGP.

Unfortunately this is all on Apple. They refused to allow h.264 low level access to hardware acceleration. That changed several months ago. Update the Flash to 10.1 and you will get hardware use of h.264.

Things are getting better and better for the Nvidia 9400m. It's an amazing GPU, and when third party apps get low level GPU access, they can do amazing things on it.

That's a great MBA, and it doesn't deserve to be bashed nor tainted with CoolBook as it's completely unnecessary.

 

[mark28]

I've had this problem on all of my Macs, including my Mac Pro. It's definitely not an issue of the machine being underpowered. It's a Flash and/or Youtube problem. I'm going to check out the Youtube5 extension. Thanks, Corax!

Maybe your internet connection is too slow or your kids/wife is downloading too much at the same thing. I think this is a bandwidth issue.

 

[foiden]

Bandwidth issues usually only cause pauses in video playback, but affect no other process in the machine. Code that causes slowdown by somehow bogging down the resources, can affect other processes. This sounds more like flash hogging up the system with no hardware acceleration support. I agree with the above poster. If HW accel is used, the 9400M should handle the flash quite well and leave that CPU alone.

 

[ZenErik]

Definitely switch to HTML5 for YouTube. So much better. Flash is very resource intensive.

Also consider trying a different browser like Google Chrome. It's not as stable as it could be because it's still very new to OS X, but I have had very few issues. Firefox and Opera are other good alternatives. I'm not sure how they benchmark in resource use and flash though.