4 replies to this topic

[erikness]

Over the last few months I've been trying to identify a maddening slowness on my iMac, vintage 2007, runinng OS 10.6.7. Caveat: my work requires me to run with a LOT of open browser windows, typically runing Safari and Firefox simultaneously. One or the other (and sometimes both) would choke, and stop responding altogether. I don't understand why, but this behavior finally went away when I shut down Spell Catcher (10.3.7).

I miss Spell Catcher, and am wondering if this new version fixes my problem -- the release notes don't mention it, but then I don't recall ever finding anyone with the same problem....

Regards,

Erik

[Evan Gross]

erikness, on 21 June 2011 - 11:24 AM, said:

Over the last few months I've been trying to identify a maddening slowness on my iMac, vintage 2007, runinng OS 10.6.7. Caveat: my work requires me to run with a LOT of open browser windows, typically runing Safari and Firefox simultaneously. One or the other (and sometimes both) would choke, and stop responding altogether. I don't understand why, but this behavior finally went away when I shut down Spell Catcher (10.3.7).

I miss Spell Catcher, and am wondering if this new version fixes my problem -- the release notes don't mention it, but then I don't recall ever finding anyone with the same problem....

Regards,

Erik

This is not an issue we are aware of. So I doubt it's fixed (you can't fix something you don't know of).

When this happens, can you open the Activity Monitor Utility, sort by CPU%, and tell me what's sucking all the CPU time?

[erikness]

Evan Gross, on 21 June 2011 - 04:57 PM, said:

When this happens, can you open the Activity Monitor Utility, sort by CPU%, and tell me what's sucking all the CPU time?

Yes, I had it open almost constantly in hopes of figuring the problem out. It's always the two browsers, directly. Seems counter-intuitive to me that turning off SC would make a difference, but the problem has vanished since I (sadly) pulled the plug two weeks ago. I've been meaning to turn it back on again and see what happens -- that's when I saw the upgrade notice.

[Evan Gross]

erikness, on 21 June 2011 - 11:06 PM, said:

Yes, I had it open almost constantly in hopes of figuring the problem out. It's always the two browsers, directly. Seems counter-intuitive to me that turning off SC would make a difference, but the problem has vanished since I (sadly) pulled the plug two weeks ago. I've been meaning to turn it back on again and see what happens -- that's when I saw the upgrade notice.

Wow, very strange. Were both browsers always consuming excessive CPU, or was it generally only the frontmost one? Was the amount of CPU similar for each browser?

Were you generally viewing the same URLs (or at least websites) in each? Any estimate on the average number of open windows/tabs in each? Did things get worse with more open windows/tabs? Or did they get worse over time?

Any chance you also looked at memory use? Definitely a tricky thing to determine on Mac OS X (i.e. what's appropriate? what's too much?), though.

Also, is your iMac 64-bit capable? In other words, was Spell Catcher’s input method component (32-bit) or input method application (64-bit) being used? Potentially important for me to know.

Anyway, a mystery to me as well as to why Spell Catcher X would cause a browser to use an excessive amount of CPU like that. The only thing I can think of that might would be if you had DirectCorrect turned on, and were viewing/editing text on all those web pages. And I mean a LOT of text…

[erikness]

Evan Gross, on 21 June 2011 - 11:21 PM, said:

Wow, very strange. Were both browsers always consuming excessive CPU, or was it generally only the frontmost one? Was the amount of CPU similar for each browser?

Both. But it could happen with only one running.

Evan Gross, on 21 June 2011 - 11:21 PM, said:

Were you generally viewing the same URLs (or at least websites) in each? Any estimate on the average number of open windows/tabs in each? Did things get worse with more open windows/tabs? Or did they get worse over time?

There may have been some overlap, but not much. Both gross number of windows open AND elapsed time seem to have some impact. But it was all very hard to reproduce.

Evan Gross, on 21 June 2011 - 11:21 PM, said:

Any chance you also looked at memory use? Definitely a tricky thing to determine on Mac OS X (i.e. what's appropriate? what's too much?), though.

No, I dodn't

Evan Gross, on 21 June 2011 - 11:21 PM, said:

Also, is your iMac 64-bit capable? In other words, was Spell Catcher’s input method component (32-bit) or input method application (64-bit) being used? Potentially important for me to know.

64 bit was on.

Definitely a huge mystery, and I'm not saying SC was to blame, just that as far as I could tell turning it off seemed to help. It's back on again -- I'll keep you posted.