MacBook Air - Lag

[MB100]

I am not doing anything extra special on my Air, I am using Itunes, Safari, and Word, and the fan is going wildly (and very loudly) and the computer is laggy some of the time, more annoying/worrying is the fan.....any explanations?
attached are some Activity Monitor screenshots for helping in an explanation...thanks

 

[SFStateStudent]

Really depends on the websites that you might be visiting. If there is FLASH content, then the MBA gets a little excited, (fans going full blast and temperature increases).

 

[aleksandra.]

Also you have almost full hard drive - it usually means slower performance. Not explaining the fan though. Perhaps it's in fact flash. Did your Air always acted like that, or did it start happening just now? And when was it bought?

 

[MB100]

Also you have almost full hard drive - it usually means slower performance. Not explaining the fan though. Perhaps it's in fact flash. Did your Air always acted like that, or did it start happening just now? And when was it bought?

bought in June 08, only started a little while ago with the fan though, kinda annoying in alot of situations

 

[SFStateStudent]

^^^ My MBA was purchased in August '08, and I've not noticed an overheat, fans making too much noise, nor have I had a core shutdown. My temperature runs 73 degrees - 124 degrees fahrenheit on average, so I'm satisfied that it's not acting up in anyway...

 

[n0de]

<10% of disk space available is a big hit.... OSX dynamically sets the swap file and if the disk space check which occurs prior to (re)allocation indicates it is below a certain threshold (unsure of exact %) the OS limits itself.

What applications do you have starting at logon? Is spotlight indexing all of the time (magnifying glass icon has a dot in the center of it)?

Also if you have really large files, like movies, the harddrive may be fragmented. Don't flame me, I know HFS+ supposedly deals with fragmentation on it's own, however with large files it still happens. The way to deal with it is to copy the files off to an external drive, reboot, run the daily/weekly/monthly maintenance scripts, reboot and copy them back.

Try moving whatever it is you have which is so large - your iTunes library perhaps - to an external HD, reboot and see what happens. I would expect a big increase. If not then there is something else going on; reinstall the OS.

A step of last resort you can try before reinstall is to run all of the cleaning steps in Onyx (wipe all of the caches). Again reboot and see what happens.

Isn't the Bill Gates quote from the 80's "nobody will ever need more than 640k of memory".... The S Jobs corollary today is "who needs more than 80gb of harddisk space."

 

[MB100]

response

What applications do you have starting at logon? Is spotlight indexing all of the time (magnifying glass icon has a dot in the center of it)?
I only start the standard stuff, I.E. finder, umm there is a fair amount of indexing which occurs.....
Also if you have really large files, like movies, the harddrive may be fragmented.
I have two movies on it, and two episodes of the office, and then music,fair amount of images though....

 

[MB100]

<10% of disk space available is a big hit.... OSX dynamically sets the swap file and if the disk space check which occurs prior to (re)allocation indicates it is below a certain threshold (unsure of exact %) the OS limits itself.

What applications do you have starting at logon? Is spotlight indexing all of the time (magnifying glass icon has a dot in the center of it)?

Also if you have really large files, like movies, the harddrive may be fragmented. Don't flame me, I know HFS+ supposedly deals with fragmentation on it's own, however with large files it still happens. The way to deal with it is to copy the files off to an external drive, reboot, run the daily/weekly/monthly maintenance scripts, reboot and copy them back.

Try moving whatever it is you have which is so large - your iTunes library perhaps - to an external HD, reboot and see what happens. I would expect a big increase. If not then there is something else going on; reinstall the OS.

A step of last resort you can try before reinstall is to run all of the cleaning steps in Onyx (wipe all of the caches). Again reboot and see what happens.

Isn't the Bill Gates quote from the 80's "nobody will ever need more than 640k of memory".... The S Jobs corollary today is "who needs more than 80gb of harddisk space."

comment before responding to....this

 

[n0de]

OK if there is regular or constant indexing going on that is probably the cause.

Unless you add/delete alot of new files on a regular basis the indexing should be rare and almost unnoticeable.

Let it sit, powered and logged on, on AC power over night - as long as possible. My 40gb of files took about 12 hours to index completely. If you have to do it over several nights that's fine, the process is designed to be able to be interrupted and restarted.

Something I have done is excepted my iTunes directory from indexing, I just don't find the value in searching for my music from spotlight.

 

[MB100]

Something I have done is excepted my iTunes directory from indexing, I just don't find the value in searching for my music from spotlight.

how do I do this?

 

[n0de]

Click on the Apple in the upper left hand corner, choose System Preferences.

On the top row, last icon is Spotlight, click on it.

There is a tab named "Privacy" click on it. This was actually designed to keep spotlight from indexing potentially embarrassing items, but you can use it to prevent indexing useless items as well.

To add directories to the exemption list click on the + button at the bottom of the listbox. Choose what directories to not index and that is it.

Personally I only use iTunes to manage my music, so I have no value in having 30,000 songs indexed. In theory because the index is smaller it should also be faster.

If you have installed Onyx, on the Maintenance item, Rebuild tab, there is a choice to rebuild the spotlight index as well. You might want to try this. Set to exempt your music library from spotlight then run this job early in an evening and let it run all night. A fresh index sometimes helps alot too.

In general, once a month I run everything under the Onyx Automation tab - it's good to clean the cruft out.