LR 2.5 says it requires 1 GB RAM to work optimally. But whenever I check Activity Monitor, my available memory is down to 400 MB and LR seems to be moving at molasses speed.
Meeting the minimum RAM specification just means that the program will run without crashing or aborting with an out of memory error. It doesn't mean that the program will run quickly or efficiently.
And of course the PB's processors are reaching 160º F and above, with the fan madly fanning away.
When importing RAW files I limit the process to about 12 images at a time and when my PB's temperature is below 118º F.
If you have a similar problem with your laptops, what are you doing to minimize heat buildup?
The suggestion to check the CPU heat sink and other components in the cooling system for dust/lint buildup is a good one. The heat sink thermal paste deterioration theory is possible, but highly unlikely unless you've dropped your laptop or otherwise done something to momentarily jar the heat sink loose from the CPU.
JPEGman, you should refrain from dispensing advice or otherwise pontificating about technology until you have a better grasp of the subject matter. There are many factors that affect overall execution speed besides CPU clock speed and core count. While it is true that CPU clock speeds haven't increased by much more than a factor of two in the last several years, there are many other factors that are involved that have increased the average number of instructions executed per clock cycle by a much greater margin:
1. Newer CPUs have more internal cache RAM than older models, so they spend less time waiting for data to be loaded from slower system RAM.
2. Memory bus speeds have increased, so loading data from system RAM takes less time than it used to.
3. Newer CPUs use more parallel execution, predictive execution, and other optimization/acceleration techniques than older ones, so that they can execute multiple instructions per core per clock cycle, or at least need fewer clock cycles to execute a single instruction.
4. Newer system designs support multiple CPUs and processing cores more efficiently than older ones, so that doubling the number of cores comes much closer to doubling overall system performance. Memory bus speed and other factors are less of a performance bottleneck.
5. Peripheral speeds, such as hard drive read/write speed, have increased significantly, and the newer chipsets involved put less of a load on the CPU than older ones. This is probably as significant as all the other factors combined, especially when performing memory-intensive tasks (which require a lot of swap file read/writes) that also need to read and write to the hard drive. Batch processing RAWs in Lightroom is a perfect example.
Checking the thermal bonding of the heat sink to CPU and ensuring that air flow is not being blocked by dust bunnies is easily and inexpensively done. But if that doesn't make much of a difference, you're better off spending your money on a new laptop than trying to upgrade the old one.
