help debugging very sluggish gmail text entry iMac G5
More details:
I'm very fond of iMac G5 computers, and I have several.
I have two where I run Leopard OSX 10.5.8 (and another one running
Tiger).
The two Leopard machines I use for some online work, and I use TFF
on them.
Here's the odd problem, on one of the G5's (a 17") gmail text entry
is incredibly slow. Something like one second is needed
per character - slower than anything I've ever seen, since the days
of teletypes! On my other G5 (a 24") running Leopard, TFF and gmail
work very well together, with reasonable text entry speed
possible.
This has been going on over the course of the past three or four
TFF updates, so it is a more global problem than any one version. I
do believe the 17" iMac is at fault somehow, because I do not have
the problem on the 24" iMac, but I'm stumped how to debug it. I've
run fresh installs of TFF. I've had only one tab open (just gmail).
I've rebooted the machine, and have only TFF running. Both machines
are connected to the home router/modem the same way, via WiFi /
Airport. (The 17" iMac with the problem sits right next to the
modem, the 24" iMac is way on the other side of the house).
Furthermore, the problem seems to be only with text entry in gmail,
but not other web pages or applications that have text entry
fields.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Boris
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 07 Nov, 2015 04:21 PM
Any different haxies, system extensions, or so on? I doubt it's a CPU problem, because this 1GHz iMac G4 can handle Gmail. It's not speedy, but I can type messages in it. If you install something like MenuMeters, does it show abnormally high CPU utilization on the 17" unit?
2 Posted by boris on 07 Nov, 2015 04:44 PM
Hi Cameron, thanks for the reply. I'll look into MenuMeters and see what
the CPU is up to. Not all text entry is affected... just primarily
gmail. Maybe gmail is doing something with the CPU, when that tab/window
is active...
Right, about the extensions, I'll have to compare those.
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3 Posted by boris on 08 Nov, 2015 04:19 AM
So I've looked at the two iMacs in a little bit more detail. They are not identical, but actually different generations.
The 17" G5 is an older one with 1.5 gigs of RAM and a 1.6GHz G5 CPU
The 24" G5 is a newer "iSight" iMac with 2.5 gigs of RAM and a 2.1GHz G5 CPU.
The version of TFF is 38.3 on both. The OS X is the same on both: 10.5.8
Only one addon is on TFF on both machines, but there is a slight difference:
17" has the LastPass v. 3.1.92
24" has the LastPass v. 3.1.77
Recall it is the 17" that has the slowness problem with google services (I've decided anything to do with google is very slow on this iMac: text entry in gmail, but also any kind of interaction with gmail, or google drive. Responsiveness is very poor.) (I used to run TFF on a G4 iBook, under OSX Leopard, and TFF was much more responsive on that, than on this 17" G5 iMac).
I installed Menu Meters on both iMacs, and I do find that google services drives CPU use to 100% on both of them. But the 24" remains very responsive.
Suspecting LastPass as a source of trouble, I deactivated it in TFF on the 17" but found little to no change in responsiveness.
But the 17" remains quick and responsive in other pages/tabs of TFF, for example typing into the text field of the tenfourfox.tenderapp forum here.
I'm attaching screengrabs.
STumped!
Boris