Why is a Gig is not a Gig

[orangemacapple]

I bought a MB c2d 2.0 on day 1. at the same time, i bought a MBP 15. the MB was for a girl employee that was living with me. She moved out a week later and took my MBP with her (several states away) and left me with the MB. but enough of that.

the problem (aside form the obvious one with the girl) is that with 1 Gig of ram it's running out of memory a lot of the time. i'm running the same apps (or less) on it than i did on my old emac (1Ghz, 1Gb), and it never ran out of memory.

i like the MB, but it's slower than the old emac and runs low on memory. How can that be?! it's got the same amount of memory. and it's a 2 Ghz c2d instead of the old 1Ghz old emac. never once happened on the emac. there's no new apps because i just migrated everything over to the MB.

i DO love my little MB. had no problems or whine or dead pixels or loose keys, etc. that others have complained about. it's just slow! i've had it a month as of today.

can anyone give me any insight as why a fast new machine with same ram is slower and needs more memory than a 3 year old emac?

 

[dpaanlka]

Because you are running PowerPC apps instead of newer, updated Intel apps. As soon as you run even one of your old PowerPC apps, Rosetta is activated and takes tons of RAM.

Your computer is significantly exponentially faster than your eMac when it is running only Intel apps.

Examples of apps that have no Intel version yet: Microsoft Office... well Microsoft anything... Adobe anything... Macromedia anything...

 

[iBookG4user]

Well, if the programs are not universal, then they will run slow and eat up ram. Go to Activity Monitor when you're running out of ram and look for any processes that aren't intel. It will tell you if they are or aren't. Also, check for updates of all your programs to see if the new versions are out, as they might be better optimized for intel.

 

[orangemacapple]

thanx guys

it never occurred to me. i'll get updates for all my apps and/or find other apps that are universal to workaround the others. never occurred to me that this is a totally different OS like trying to run pc apps under vpc

i like this site. there are so many geniuses out there ready and willing to answer my questions with intelligent helpful answers. maybe some day i'll get smart, too! lol

thanx again guys

 

[72930]

Examples of apps that have no Intel version yet: Microsoft Office... well Microsoft anything... Adobe anything... Macromedia anything...

Messenger:mac is universal.

 

[72930]

i like this site. there are so many geniuses out there ready and willing to answer my questions with intelligent helpful answers. maybe some day i'll get smart, too! lol

thanx again guys

1 ) You're smart enough to use macs.

2) You're smart enough to know what RAM is (you would be surprised how many people don't)

3) And most importantly...you're smart enough to come to this great site with so many great people and post a well worded question and a thank you reply.

You'll be helping people solve their problems in no time. Also, don't forget to look for universal alternatives to applications you use that are still PPC based, like NeoOffice if you use Office:mac.

 

[dpaanlka]

You'll be helping people solve their problems in no time. Also, don't forget to look for universal alternatives to applications you use that are still PPC based, like NeoOffice if you use Office:mac.

I must disagree. NeoOffice / OpenOffice are really trashy alternatives to Microsoft Office and to a lesser extent Apple iWork (although iWork doesn't feature spreadsheets yet).

 

[72930]

I must disagree. NeoOffice / OpenOffice are really trashy alternatives to Microsoft Office and to a lesser extent Apple iWork (although iWork doesn't feature spreadsheets yet).

I prefer NeoOffice for my basic text documents to office:mac, because it is so much faster. Pages is what I use for my note taking in school.

 

[livingfortoday]

I must disagree. NeoOffice / OpenOffice are really trashy alternatives to Microsoft Office and to a lesser extent Apple iWork (although iWork doesn't feature spreadsheets yet).

Yeah, I agree, I've been really disappointed with these apps. They launch a bit faster than Office on my Intel Mini, but there's always formatting issues with any file I input or output, so it's just not worth it for me. I can't spend hours on a paper only to have it come out looking nuts when I email it to someone who uses MS Word.

 

[orangemacapple]

i found the offender!

it was a widget -- ministat2
it didn't use very much memory itself, but after i got rid of it, my free memory after reboot increased ¼G. activity monitor told me a translate process was using ppc

i couldn't find any app named translate. i told a.m. to quit proess. worked fine until i accessed widgets again, then the translate process came back on the a.m. deleted ministat2 and it didn't happen anymore. my inactive memory allocation dropped.

Now everything is hunky-dory and my mac is humming along like a mac should.

it's hard to believe a tiny little widget could wreak so much havoc.

i really don't know how to thank you guys enough!

 

[Mal]

Must've been executing PowerPC code, but since it's a widget, it was accessing that in the background repeatedly. Good catch!

jW

 

[sycho]

Messenger:mac is universal.

Messenger:mac sucks.

 

[iW00t]

1 ) You're smart enough to use macs.

2) You're smart enough to know what RAM is (you would be surprised how many people don't)

3) And most importantly...you're smart enough to come to this great site with so many great people and post a well worded question and a thank you reply.

You'll be helping people solve their problems in no time. Also, don't forget to look for universal alternatives to applications you use that are still PPC based, like NeoOffice if you use Office:mac.

He is smart enough to think that he thinks different, live a hip "different" lifestyle together with a girl "employee", who stole his Macbook Pro. Enough about that...

 

[qbmcnabb108]

Is there going to be a Mac version of Office 2007? If so, will it be optimized to run on intel macs?

 

[dpaanlka]

Is there going to be a Mac version of Office 2007? If so, will it be optimized to run on intel macs?

Yes...

 

[qbmcnabb108]

Thanks, dpaanlka.

I have another question. Will it be comming out around the same time as Ofiice 07 for windows or a couple of months later? What I am really wondering is that I want to switch to a Mac from Windows and want to do it around the time leopard comes out, so I just want to know if it will be out in time for that.

 

[dukebound85]

Thanks, dpaanlka.

I have another question. Will it be comming out around the same time as Ofiice 07 for windows or a couple of months later? What I am really wondering is that I want to switch to a Mac from Windows and want to do it around the time leopard comes out, so I just want to know if it will be out in time for that.

i have heard it will be a couple months later. theres alot of discussion about them getting rid of vba (micros and stuff) which has alot of people mad also

 

[qbmcnabb108]

Thanks!