I'm getting the Beach Ball of Death way too much...

baranovichbaranovich
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I'm running Tiger on my 15" PowerBook 1.5Ghz with 2GB of RAM, and I've noticed that I'm beginning to get the "Beach Ball of Death" quite a lot. I've done all the usual maintenence tasks, like repairing permissions and such, but nothing has helped. I'm thinking of doing a fresh install of Tiger and going from there. Does OS X get junked up like Windows after running for a couple of years? Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by baranovich

    I'm running Tiger on my 15" PowerBook 1.5Ghz with 2GB of RAM, and I've noticed that I'm beginning to get the "Beach Ball of Death" quite a lot. I've done all the usual maintenence tasks, like repairing permissions and such, but nothing has helped. I'm thinking of doing a fresh install of Tiger and going from there. Does OS X get junked up like Windows after running for a couple of years? Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening?



    How many fonts do you have switched on in FontBook?
  • Reply 2 of 5
    baranovichbaranovich Posts: 184member
    Uhm.... 429. Do you think thats the cause of my slow down? If so I'd say OS X has a pretty serious flaw. I mean designers could easily have that many fonts (and amatuer designers, like myself, could too).
  • Reply 3 of 5
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    In my experience, fonts can bring a system to its knees.



    I am a pro freelance designer, and as a rule, I only have the minimum of fonts activated. Once I finish one job I disable all the fonts and load up only those required for the next job. It keeps your font menus short and to the point as well.



    ATSServer (the process that makes your fonts available system-wide) can gobble up 90%+ of your processing power if you give it half a chance.



    Try disabling all your fonts bar the system fonts and see if the problem persists. Its worth trying?
  • Reply 4 of 5
    baranovichbaranovich Posts: 184member
    Whoa! What a huge difference! Thanks for the advice.



    Still seems wrong to me that OS X can't handle having a large number of fonts enabled... Windows doesn't slow down (at least not in my experiences) when a large number of fonts have been installed... weird.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by baranovich

    Whoa! What a huge difference! Thanks for the advice.



    Still seems wrong to me that OS X can't handle having a large number of fonts enabled... Windows doesn't slow down (at least not in my experiences) when a large number of fonts have been installed... weird.



    I'm glad it's made a difference!
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