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tip-TOP-tailor your system usage
Authored by: kjackson on Feb 21, '02 08:26:57PM

Use top frequently.

Not all OSX programs idle equally. I have found some interesting and unusal idling behaviour in several of my often used programs... even some "big name ones".

For example... when the ICQ client's history window is open, ICQ gobbles up processor cyles even though the program is apparantly doing nothing. Explorer does the same thing when the download manager is active... even if your download is only coming in at a measely 255 bytes/second IE still devours your cpu.

I have also noticed that many programs consume some cpu cycles when idle with their windows showing, but use none when the application is hidden.

And for shareware and freeware goodies... I always run top to see what their cpu usage is like. Some are excellent... some are pretty pathetic!

Top is also useful to check for severe memory leaks. I have discovered one in ICQ... sending messages results in a small amount of ram being eaten up and not returned to the system. Using top, I once found the ICQ client had declared itself 183MB of private memory!!

Use top often to see what is going on behind the seens! If you notice your system is more sluggish than usual or you hear the disk drive grinding... top will tell you who the culprit is.



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tip-TOP-tailor your system usage
Authored by: Margit on Jul 12, '02 05:47:39PM

Does the Process Listing in Utilities possibly give the same sort of information for those of us not into the Teminal type of thing? After reading your hint, and others, on speeding up the Mac (in my case, G4 DP 500 with 1.5 GB Ram, running OSX 10.15, VERY sluggish!), I launched Process Listing and noticed that something called TruBlueEnvironment was listed twice and using lots of both memory and CPU. I found only one reference to TruBlueEnvironment searching in OSX Hints, so went to Google and discovered that this is code for Classic. I also discovered postings there where folks had discovered that they had Classic launched twice over. Talk about memory hogs!

The dual launch of Classic in my case seems to be related to spontaneous crashes triggered by the cursor moving over a certain part of the screen or window. I haven't quite narrowed it down, but it has happened when using RealPlayer, TitleTrackJukebox, and Reunion, the only applications that I launch Classic for anymore. Each time I have had the classic application in the background and been using a Carbon or Cocoa application. When the cursor casually crosses part of the Classic window (but not necessarily in 100% of the instances), that application closes instantly and Classic appears to have shut down, or at least becomes unavailable. Relaunching Classic produces the dual TruBlueEnvironment, and SERIOUS slowdowns.

I may be the only person in the universe experiencing this particular set of circumstances, but it would seem to be another avenue to explore to improve speed in OSX.



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