Computer Illiterate With Slow M11x

Hey Guys I did try a search. But I wasn't able to find anything. I'm sure theres something out there. But I was unable to find it. Not sure I would understand it anyways. Like the title says I'm pretty computer illiterate. Just got my m11x a week ago. It started our running alright. But Started really going slow once I put a few programs on it.

I have a R2 with the i7, 8gb ram and 500gb sata.

I brought up the task manager to see what was going on as this thing is running worse than my gfs ancient neo and noticed this:

CPU-15%-70%

Physical memory sits at around the 30% mark.

This is with msn, yahoo (one conversation), skype, and firefox with 7 tabs one is youtube for some music.

Like I said this thing feels to be running at the same speeds as an old neo. Which is pretty terrible. A restart did make it somewhat better but its still really bad. My knowledge over computers is pretty basic so if anyone can help get this thing running like it should I'd appreciate it.

 

Clicking on the battery/power icon in the lower-right corner next to the clock should list some power settings. Which one do you have it set to? I've found that switching from 'power saver' to 'high performance' makes a huge difference on my current system.

 

when you go to task manager, you can click on CPU to sort which executables are using the most resources...what are the big offenders for you?

also, depending on what you've opened in the past (and even closed), what you have open now, and how long it's been since you've re-started firefox, it can end up pulling something like 500-700 MB of RAM if you leave it open and open/close numerous tabs over the span of a few days.

 

Ah okay makes sense. I do have a habbit of not closing firefox and just closing tabs. I did switch it over to performance mode. That and a full shutdown and reboot do seem to be making a huge difference

CPU usage is now down to between 0%-15% with youtube going. Seems to be running a whole lot better. Thanks a lot guys!

 

As far as I know the multiplier is at it's lowest on Power Saver(meaning less powerful CPU meaning it has to work harder) and at it's highest on Performance mode. Take a look Throttlestop. You multiplier will rise and fall depending on load and cool down. Throttlestop keeps it at its max.

 

yup yup...the M11x with 4 GB RAM should be pretty snappy for 98% of everyday tasks. however, that firefox thing is really annoying. i switched over to chrome a long time ago and haven't looked back. i believe chrome opens separate .exes when you open a new tab, and therefore kills that .exe when you close that tab as well. firefox does not.

then again, i do miss a lot of ff add-ons.

 

maybe I'll give chrome a try. I am a bit of firefox fanboy. But its already climbing in cpu and memory usage and such since my last post. I open and close tabs like the best of them. I think you're right about chrome opening seperate .exes at least thats what im observing. Im gonna have to give it a try. Does seem kinda plain though. Like you I'll miss my add ons.

 

Chrome is awesome, looks really nice on small screens as well.

 

I've moved over to chrome also, and now FF feels clunky to me. There are plenty of great add-ons available also, I've replaced all but a couple of my FF extensions. I've used FF from the beginning, but I rarely miss it now.

 

chrome is just way faster/snappier than ff. at the end of the day, i'm going to value that over a handful of add-ons.

 

I was making a comparison of Chrome 9-dev vs Safari 5 vs FF 4-beta (with performance tweaks) on Mac OS and Windows XP a while age. The fastest were Chrome and Safari beating each other from test to test, the FF was always behind. FF 3.6.x was a lot slower than 4-beta.