I have a 2010 MacBook pro 2.26 GHZ, 2GB Ram. Let me detail a bit of background first.
I had it running Leopard, and had the same issue with it running slow. I got annoyed with how it was running, so I wiped the HDD. I used DBAN on it, then installed Leopard from disk, then purchased Lion. I did this 2 days ago.
The only apps I have on my Mac, that I've installed, right now are:
- FireFox
- Logic Pro 9
- Native Instruments Komplete
And that's the only applications I've installed. Currently the only apps I have running are:
- Firefox
- iMessage
In the activity monitor FireFox is using 560MB ram with 2 tabs open. I get the same when I use Safari, or Chrome.
When I switch applications on the Mac, or even switch tabs on FireFox, I get the spinning wheel. When I open a new application it takes a long time to open. I can't have anything else open if I'm browsing the web because it's painfully slow switching tabs, and even rending pages is slow (it's not an Internet issue).
The Mac seems to be always Indexing. When it's indexing it's not even usable.
I can't understand why this is happening. I have an older iMac that performs better than this Mac. I'm ready to sell it, I've had enough of Mac laptops, they just seem to cause constant headaches.
There is no reason why a web browser should be consuming so much RAM with two tabs open (one being bit.ly the other being Stack Exchange).
Can anyone offer some advice? If you need any information from me leave a comment and I'll update the post.
Best Answer
Aside of getting more RAM, you can do following.
Disabling the flash in your Firefox will save you some.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/
To your third question: On my OS x 10.8 the "kernel" alone uses 1 gig already!! so you are definitely running short on RAM.
Just get another 2 Gig and see it fly.