OSX 10.4 System Update Woes

sushiboy

I am running OSX 10.4 on an Intel chip. I have had the computer for a few years now (however long Intel Macs have been out) and am very happy with it. The only thing about it that has been kind of irking me lately is the fact that, every time I do a system update, the machine gets a tad slower. At first it was no big deal, but now after doing system updates for years, the machine is a good bit slower than it used to be. I know it is system updates causing this because everytime I dl and install a sys update, when I restart the machine is noticeably slower than what it was before I restarted. Is anyone else having this problem? I am guessing this is a widespread issue.

Arminas

I had 10.4 until 10.5 came out. But I never really noticed an issue with slowdown because of system updates. I mean, the MB isn't the fastest kid on the block, maybe you've just got too much loading on start-up? I honestly didn't notice a slow-down when updating, but rather I sort of felt one over time. I wasn't sure if it was my imagination in that I had gotten accustomed to the speed or if there was a genuine slow down over time. I think it might've just been my imagination.

And it's not like OS X 10.4 faces the same issues of fragmentation as old Windows does.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375?viewlocale=en_US

Check your login items. Sys pref -> user accounts and then one of those tabs in there should have login items.

The only other time where I noticed a horrible slowdown in my computer was when a system background process would kick in that indexed everything for spotlight. If I let it do its thing (anywhere from a minute to an hour) it would behave again. If I got impatient, I might just restart and it'd go away, but that didn't happen often.

Hm...
You might also be running low on disk space? OS X likes to have free space to use as virtual memory and without it it can slow down. Certain applications also just aren't optimized with OS X. I mean, I love firefox and all, but god it's such a hungry little bastard on OS X.

Oh, you could also try making a new user account to see if the slow down is with just your account options or if it's more of a system-wide problem.

Lewisham

Sounds like you're seeing things you want to see, just like how Apple faithful say that it goes faster with every update. I honestly never saw any real speed changes whatsoever in the 10.4.x updates.

If you're really so sure, dig out your Mac OS X CDs and do an Archive + Install and see what happens.

pabh

To be honest the only thing that might be an issue is if you are installing the by version updates, (ie 10.4.8-10.4.9) and not the combo updates, which are supposedly better for the updating, or if you possibly have permissions errors before or after an update