Hmmm...I wonder if this is my roommate's problem. Last year I gave her my 2008 Macbook Pro (a fully decked-out one at the time) because her 8 year old iMac broke...and she has been complaining constantly about how slow it is. She incessantly curses out the beach ball and will slam the mouse down repeatedly because she swears it makes the ball go away faster.
Because of that last bit, I've never taken her seriously. That laptop was working fine when I was using it for Photoshopping raw images while having 15 browser windows open...her use-case is literally to have something to check GMail with and sometimes listen to her iTunes collection. I've gone into the laptop several times to make sure there isn't bloatware on it, and have disabled every extraneous feature...and yet she still has the few-second freezes issue (and I've been unable to reproduce it)....Hopefully this is the solution to both of our problems.
The beach ball is a different issue... this is basically a complete freeze where the mouse cursor doesn't move for a few seconds. Doesn't happen all that often, but it's quite annoying whenever it does happen.
Do you have an Java apps running in the background, such as a Java based backup tool? On my previous Macbook I had problems with it beachballing and it seemed to be caused by issues with Java.
I don't think it sounds like the same thing - though, if you find the solution to your roommate's issue I'd love to hear it.
I have a new (< 6 months) Mac Mini running ML and it's infuriatingly slow opening applications. It's not unusual to wait 10-15 seconds after clicking to open Chrome or Spotify (or anything else). My 5 year old MacBook does the same thing in a fraction of the time (running SL).
And one of those terrible clear plastic mighty mice with the useless trackball. I'm quite surprised it's lasted this long given the beating she's given it.
Because of that last bit, I've never taken her seriously. That laptop was working fine when I was using it for Photoshopping raw images while having 15 browser windows open...her use-case is literally to have something to check GMail with and sometimes listen to her iTunes collection. I've gone into the laptop several times to make sure there isn't bloatware on it, and have disabled every extraneous feature...and yet she still has the few-second freezes issue (and I've been unable to reproduce it)....Hopefully this is the solution to both of our problems.