Hi Þorvarður

Not sure what could be causing your problem - how many items do you have on the desktop? Having many items on the desktop is known to slow down the Mac.

You should check the Apple Discussions for MacBook Pro, here: http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=190

and search for "slow"

I don't think it's a problem with RAM, 4 GB is more than enough.

Regards
Jeff
-- 
Using NWP 1.4.1 on a Mac Pro 2.66 MHz running Mac OSX 10.6.6

On 11 Jan 2011, at 09:45, Þorvarður Davíðsson wrote:

> Dear list members,
> 
> I'm still having a small problem with my new MacBook Pro. Maybe somebody here can help me to solve it.
> 
> I'm able to work nicely for many hours, then I suddenly notice that my MacBook Pro 17 '' gets very slow. I quit all applications and make a restart or I shut down (doesn't seem to make any difference which one I do.) When I startup again all desktop icons have been placed neatly on the right side of the monitor. It is as if I had chosen the menu command "Arrange by Name" in Finder View > Show View Options 'Arrange by Name'. I never do this because I always have "Arrange by NONE" as default.
> 
> When this happens the Trash View changes too (at least most of the time, sometimes not) from "View as List" to "View as Icons" which is the default view in OS 10.6.5.
> 
> After this happens I am usually also asked when opening applications whether I really want to do so because this is apparently the first time I am opening them. This means the computer has lost track of which applications I have previously used and which not.
> 
> A couple of days ago this was accompanied by an additional incident. After restarting the machine all my custom icons which I had put in the Finder Toolbar were gone and instead I had suddenly the default set including the buttons "Quick Look" and "Action" which I never use.
> 
> I can't reproduce the above mentioned misbehavior. Yesterday it happened when I was playing with Speech Recognition. Is Speech Recognition particularly memory hungry?
> 
> In systems prior to OS X this odd icon behavior was an indication for that the Desktop file was corrupt. Deleting the Desktop file used to solve the problem. I have now deleted the Finder preferences but to no avail. I have also run Disk Utility, OnyX and some other maintenance software. 
> 
> 
> Could it be that I have too little RAM for OS 10.6.5 (I have 4 GB)? 
> 
> Does a MacBook Pro NEEDS a restart, let's say, every 2 hours or so in order to regain full memory and run smoothly?
> 
> I usually run my MBP with an additional 2 TB external Western Digital hard disk plugged in, I don't think that makes any difference.
> 
> Does anyone have a suggestion what I could do to stop this annoying behavior?
> 
> 
> With kind regards,
> 
> Þorvarður
> OS X 10.6.5
> MacBook Pro 17''