Is this normal CPU usage for a Macbook?

I’d say thats quite high, although I have the 2011 quad-core so maybe I’m biased. I’d backup your info, restore your macbook pro, then see if it runs better, if not its a hardware issue. Good Luck!

Well, that image is RAM usage. You have one Gig installed. That will really slow things down. Firefox for me is using more than you have right now. RAM is super cheap and really easy to install. For $34 bucks you can double the RAM and I guarantee it will speed things up a good amount. Depending on the Macbook you might be able to get 4Gigs in there. But I would need to know the exact model to tell you in that would work. Here is what I see in Activity Monitor. It is using 4 Gigs and I only have a few things open.

I have a late 2008 macbook, 2.2 GHz Inter Core 2 Duo, 1GB Memory 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Is there anything i can do now software-wise to clean things up until I manage to buy some RAM (if I even ever will)? Thanks for your responses!

I checked and the upgrade for that to go to 4 Gigs is 60 bucks and it would make it be like getting a new computer.

If only having Safari open is killing things something is wrong. Can you get a screenshot of Activity Monitor showing ‘All Processes’ sorted by CPU usage like this. Perhaps some process has gone crazy.

edit :: And keep in mind that Flash will destroy your CPU.

I have a 2009 Macbook pro 13”. During a normal work session with perhaps 30% average cpu load the cpu temperature tends to stay around 80c, with peaks as high as 95 and lows at around 70. This in an office with ambient temp around 21c.

@johnpowell is right, it’s swapping a lot (very slow) and adding RAM is a cheap and easy way to improve the picture dramatically.

Oh Lord! 1 gig of Ram! No wonder your laptop is slow

@johnpowell Sure. Here’s a screenshot with only Safari, a Mac App Store app called “Alfred”, and Activity Monitor running. Even with only 1 GB of ram i don’t think it should be that unresponsive with only those things running, right?