Re: What could be causing a slowdown across the board?

In article <1ih33jz.18rogzx5kka42N%jamiekg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jamiekg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jamie Kahn Genet) wrote:

On a 1st generation Aluminium 24" 2.8GHz iMac running 10.5.2:

Menus open after a couple seconds or more. Switching apps results in
several seconds or even up to 30 seconds in some cases of the spinning
beachball. World of Warcraft is jumpy. Etc, etc.

I experienced this on the second of three 24" iMacs I had, but that one
was a serious lemon of course. This slowness on my third 24" iMac is new
and extremely annoying

How new is "new" in comparison to how long you've had the machine?
Did you change anything, no matter how unrelated it might seem, right
before the slowdown was first observed?
What's the output of the command "cd /var/vm; ls -l" in a terminal?
What are the top few apps listed when you use "top -o cpu" in a terminal?

Also - does anyone ever find on any Mac that stacks open immediately and
smoothly? Or the same with the dashboard? Or Exposé? The only places
I've seen these things work smoothly and responsively are Apple
keynotes.

All those things work fine here.

--
"Harry?" Ron's voice was a mere whisper. "Do you smell something ... burning?"
- Harry Potter and the Odor of the Phoenix
.