HELP! Why is my Macbook so slow?!!

greggwsmithgreggwsmith
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I am totally at a loss. My web browsing is incredibly slow. I am talking a good 15 to 20 seconds in loading pages. It's a 1rst gen black Macbook with 2gig of RAM. My Dell D410 with a 1.73 "Centrino" Pentium M with 1gig of RAM absolutely blazes and I can't figure out what's wrong?! I have tried different RAM and the Macbook is still a dog. WTF?! I find myself using the Dell more which frightens me quite a bit. LOL\

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    yamayama Posts: 427member
    Which browser are you using? Safari? Firefox? Are they all slow?



    For Safari: empty the browser cache, clear your history and cookies, delete the "Icons" folder from ~/Library/Safari.



    And get rid of any 3rd-party plug-ins/extensions which might be installed for your browsers.
  • Reply 2 of 15
    archstudentarchstudent Posts: 262member
    are you using the same internet connection on both machines?
  • Reply 3 of 15
    greggwsmithgreggwsmith Posts: 523member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Archstudent View Post


    are you using the same internet connection on both machines?



    Yes, I am using the same accesspoint and it's incredibly slow using both Safari and Firefox. The Dell is 1000 times faster with both IE and Safari for PC. Argh!!! It's painfully slow. My wife's G4 iBook makes my Macbook look like a Apple IIc with 8mb of RAM!!
  • Reply 4 of 15
    greggwsmithgreggwsmith Posts: 523member
    I just found a website called Open DNS and followed their info. Instant improvement!!! Much much faster now.
  • Reply 5 of 15
    keikojaakeikojaa Posts: 37member
    and what about open dns ? how it was able to help it ?
  • Reply 6 of 15
    1337_5l4xx0r1337_5l4xx0r Posts: 1,558member
    Basically, shitty ISPs *cough*like Telus in Canada*cough* throttle speed 'accidentally' by having underpowered DNS servers. This slows lookups, slowing web access considerably. Google "DNS" if you don't know what that is.



    OpenDNS.org offers their name servers to the public, allowing you to override your ISP's weak-sauce DNS servers with ones that work quickly. You enter the new DNS servers System Prefs -> Networking -> Airport (or whatever) -> TCP/IP -> DNS Servers



    Paste in these values:

    208.67.220.220

    208.67.222.222



    Suddenly web speeds are back up to where they *should* be.
  • Reply 7 of 15
    mikej26mikej26 Posts: 1member
    i typed in the new values, and now my macbook is like the day i bought it! it went from loading some webpages 15-20 seconds now loading in 2-3 seconds! Sweet! thanks again
  • Reply 8 of 15
    kingarawanakingarawana Posts: 1member
    holy cow it actually worked!..i didn't even know what i was doing. i just followed what the person wrote.. haha i made an account JUST do say it worked. google loads WAY faster now. thanks!
  • Reply 9 of 15
    kennyfinnkennyfinn Posts: 1member
    I followed the directions from 1337_5L4Xx0R like 3 post up there and it worked. It is 2011 and this crap still works. Thank you for helping me with my problem guys



    later,



    kenny



    p.s. I created an account just to let everyone else know that it works too!!!!
  • Reply 10 of 15
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    people should be aware that using an open DNS, Google DNS or similar instead of their own ISP's DNS servers can cause problems with content that's delivered by a content delivery network, such as iTunes or Netflix.



    With normal websites, a site is hosted at one location, often on a single machine; larger websites use multiple servers but they are still all in the same place. If you happen to live near to this location, you will possibly see faster access to the site as there are fewer "hops" over the internet from you to the servers compared to someone further away.



    To save huge amounts of data travelling half way around the world and clogging up the internet, services that supply huge amounts of data such as iTunes and iPlayer tend to use distributed content delivery networks; someone in California gets the content from San Francisco (say), whilst for someone in the UK, they get the content from London. In order for this to work, the DNS server must give the person in California the IP address for the servers in SF, whilst it must give the person in the UK the IP address for the servers in London. Only your own ISP's DNS will give you the correct IP address; Open DNS/Google DNS do not. In fact, they can end up giving out random IP addresses; on Monday a given user might get the IP address for servers in Malaysia, and on Tuesday the same person could be given the IP address for servers in France. The further, geographically, you are from the server the higher the latency (due to more "hops"; can be a problem from streaming services) and the more likely your connection to suffer from congestion and lost packets decreasing bandwidth (problem for both streaming and download sites).



    If you use Open DNS/Google DNS and have poor experience with iTunes, Netflix etc., try changing back to your ISP's DNS servers.
  • Reply 11 of 15
    al_noal_no Posts: 1member
    1337_5L4Xx0R, you are a God. And yes, I also just joined AppleInsider to tell you that.
  • Reply 12 of 15
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Al_No View Post


    1337_5L4Xx0R, you are a God. And yes, I also just joined AppleInsider to tell you that.



    Thread's three years old. I doubt he'll ever see it. \
  • Reply 13 of 15
    smaxsmax Posts: 361member
    Just a thought here, but every so often an account pops up saying that OpenDNS is god, bumping the thread. All of these accounts all have one post and no activity other than that post.



    Could someone from OpenDNS be doing this to push their own DNS service?
  • Reply 14 of 15
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by smax View Post


    Could someone from OpenDNS be doing this to push their own DNS service?



    I would say that that's absolutely the case, but we'd have to check IP addresses to make sure.
  • Reply 15 of 15
    1337_5l4xx0r1337_5l4xx0r Posts: 1,558member
    What I use these days:



    8.8.8.8

    8.8.4.4



    4.2.2.1

    4.2.2.2

    4.2.2.3



    as my DNS servers. the first two are google's. This 'google' (some high tech company) seems to have good bandwidth.



    The last three are some major ISP (I forget who) who has good response times.
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