Tweak or reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.3?

[HiDeHo]

Hi i have had a problem with apps taking longer to load than usual. I get the spinning wheel more often that before.

this bring up the question "are there any tweaks i can do or should i reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.3?"

I am a fairly new mac user (around 9 months) so i don't know much about tweaking osx to keep it running its best yet, not liek i do with windows.

Here is some info that may help to sort this out
Specs

1. Device: Macbook Pro October 2011. (genuine refurbished purchased September 2012)
2. Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5
3. Memory: 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
4. Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
5. Software: OSX 10.8.3 (12D78)

Installed apps

apps most used

1. Chrome: main web browser
2. Adium: instant messaging app
3. Skype: chat and video chat
4. Spotify: music application
5. Music Manager: google music player and manager
6. Libreoffice: office suite similar to MS office
7. Picasa: photo manager and editor
8. Google Drive file sharing
9. dropbox: file sharing
10. dropbox encoore: 2nd dropbox account
11. boom: equaliser and volume booster
12. Caffeine: stops screensaver and sleep mode from starting
13. Sophos: Antivirus
14. vlc: video and music player
15. rEFInd: boot manager
16. Adobe Reader: adobe free pdf reader adn manager
17. IntelliType / IntelliPoint: Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse drivers

other apps installed

1. Firefox: web browser
2. opera: web browser
3. thunderbird: email and calendar application
4. uTorrent: Torrent downloader
5. Burn: Burn cd and dvd
6. DoubleTwist: music manager for android devices
7. img2icns: convert images to icon files
8. imagine: Photo manager
9. imedia Browser: standalone apple media browser
10. OpenLP: church music, powerpoint, sermon notes data projector manager
11. Prestol!: page manager application
12. skitch: screenshot tool
13. small dvd: turn images and video files into a dvd image.
14. Art2txt: make title images etc from txt
15. inkiscape: similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X
16. scribus: similar to publisher and pages
17. adapter: image, audio and video converter
18. HashDrop: create md5 checksum for apps files etc
19. Homebrew: package manager for osx (hardly use)
20. Homebrew Gui: Graphical user interface for Homebrew
21. Virtualbox (Vbox): install and run other operating systems in osx
22. xCode: developer tools for osx (required for some apps to run
23. AppCleaner: uninstall apps and userfiles for apps that dont have an uninstaller
24. Blackmagic: speed test tool for osx
25. Microsoft Silverlight: for websites that use silverlight instead of flash
26. the unArchiver: compress and uncompress archive and zip files
27. xQuartz: needed for some applications to run
28. CrossOver: install and run windows applications in osx
29. e-Sword: bible app (needs CrossOver to run)
30. partition inspector: used to diagnose problems with rEFIt, rEFInd and linux os
31. Flip Player: play microsoft video and music formats that other apps may not be able to

login items

1. google drive
2. dropbox
3. Caffeine
4. boom
5. Microsoft Keyboard Helper
6. Microsoft Mouse Helper
7. Music Manager

General setup
i run 7 desktops for different types of applications

1. Desktop 1: web browsers
2. Desktop 2: messaging (adium, skype etc)
3. Desktop 3: office apps (Libreoffice, pages etc)
4. Desktop 4: Music and video apps (itunes, vlc etc)
5. Desktop 5: Photo video managers (picasa, small dvd, imedia, iphoto etc)
6. Desktop 6: garageband, imovie
7. Desktop 7: Apple system apps (system preferences, Calendar, App Store etc)

I am not sure if any apps or my setup may be causing things to play up now.
if there is anything you can recommend I do it would be helpful.

As always Thanks again in advance for any tips, tricks, and ideas you may provide below.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

The spinning beach ball is often an indicator of not enough rum, thus open Activity Monitor and go to the System Memory* tab and look for Page Outs and Swap used and report back.

Using Activity Monitor to show you CPU and RAM usage​

* Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor​

If you want to enhance the performance of your Mac, be sure to check these two articles, do not just use applications, that promise to do it for you.

• Performance Tips For Mac OS X
• Mac Performance Guide

Articles explaining why Mac OS X does not need maintenance software like CCleaner, MacKeeper or CleanMyMac:

• Five Mac maintenance myths
  [*]The myth of the dirty Mac

 

[Macman45]

Hi i have had a problem with apps taking longer to load than usual. I get the spinning wheel more often that before.

this bring up the question "are there any tweaks i can do or should i reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.3?"

I am a fairly new mac user (around 9 months) so i don't know much about tweaking osx to keep it running its best yet, not liek i do with windows.

Here is some info that may help to sort this out
Specs


Installed apps


login items

General setup
i run 7 desktops for different types of applications

I am not sure if any apps or my setup may be causing things to play up now.
if there is anything you can recommend I do it would be helpful.

As always Thanks again in advance for any tips, tricks, and ideas you may provide below.

I'd add in some RAM...8GB should give you a substantial performance boost. I put 16GB in my 17" before I sold it, and it made a world of difference, no page outs, no beach balls.

 

[benwiggy]

this bring up the question "are there any tweaks i can do or should i reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.3?"

The answer to the question "should I reinstall OS X?" is usually "No", unless you , or some process you authorised, have altered or deleted large numbers of system files. 99% of the files that the OS X installer installs are usually read-only, so they do not need to be replaced with identical copies.

Most problems occur in temp files, caches, preferences and configuration files.

I would certainly look at getting more RAM, which never hurts. Also -- a reboot every now and then will clean out some cobwebs.
After that, you can consider some troubleshooting steps. But the advice already given above is excellent.

 

[Drew017]

Hi i have had a problem with apps taking longer to load than usual. I get the spinning wheel more often that before.

this bring up the question "are there any tweaks i can do or should i reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.3?"

I am a fairly new mac user (around 9 months) so i don't know much about tweaking osx to keep it running its best yet, not liek i do with windows.

Here is some info that may help to sort this out
Specs


Installed apps


login items

General setup
i run 7 desktops for different types of applications

I am not sure if any apps or my setup may be causing things to play up now.
if there is anything you can recommend I do it would be helpful.

As always Thanks again in advance for any tips, tricks, and ideas you may provide below.

Looking through your installed apps, you really don't need the antivirus app. Since you're using a Mac, you don't really need to worry about viruses.

----------

I'd recommend installing more RAM (at least 8 gigs maybe) and an SSD. With an SSD app startup time should be super fast and you will have more RAM to work with the many apps that you have

Also, what do you usually run at a time? If you've got too many apps open/ background processes etc this will really slow down your computer. From what I see, if you keep all those apps open on your MacBook Pro that you listed with your desktops, your going to experience lagging.

 

[w0lf]

If you seriously have 7 desktop spaces open with apps running in each of them then you most likely don't have enough ram with only 4GB. When you're opening a new app you're computer is probably having to swap out ram to your hdd and then when you go to use an app which has has it's memory swapped to the hdd it going to have to get swapped back into ram in exchange for something else and that's definitely going to slow things down a lot.

If you want things to start/run fast you'll probably want to:

1) Upgrade to 8 or even 16gb of ram (16gb probably wouldn't be needed but would add a little future proofing if you plan on keeping the computer for a while).

2) Get an SSD if you don't have one already.


Also just a few other things:

Do you really need 4 web browsers?

Have you tried transmission instead of utorrent? It's a mac native torrent client, it's free, it doesn't have ads or any of that junk, and it also fits the mac feel quite a bit better IMO.

As someone else mentioned you probably don't need the anti-virus tool.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

The spinning beach ball is often an indicator of not enough rum, thus open...

...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum

Warning: The combination of beach balls, the sun and rum is deadly!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum

Warning: The combination of beach balls, the sun and rum is deadly!

Thanks for the laugh.

 

[HiDeHo]

Hi all thanks for the tips and tricks so far.
just to clarify. i dont have all the apps running in every desktop. mainly just

chrome browser
adium
itunes.
and then other apps as i need to use them.

Although the suggestion of more ram, and ssd is a good one that cost money. and for me I dont have much income to afford to do that, along with other things in life. even though that may be the best option.

I guess i will have to watch what background processes i have and sop ones i don't need all the time.
such as google music manager, dropbox, google drive, etc. I will keep an eye out and see what i find.

at the moment there is not much running at all and that is with my general 3 apps os it looks good atm. i will keep an eye out.