Safari makes my MacBook incredibly slow - what to do? System configuration

I'm working with a MacBook 2,16 GHz (13" white with the max. 3 GB RAM from about 2007) and "Snowleopard" OS 10.6.8.

The problem: performance

After a while, the MacBook becomes incredibly slow and unresponsive, because Safari and the Safari Web Content process use all available RAM.
At the moment, e. g. Safari Web Content uses >1,4 GB physical RAM.

Sure, I also have a lot of other Applications open, but normally Safari seems to be the one that regularly uses most of the RAM.

Virtual memory might be an issue - the System partition with OS X is 100 GB in size, after a reboot I have about 17 GB free drive space, at the moment there are 12.7 GB free drive space.

I admit, that I sometimes have several windows with maybe 10..20 Tabs open in Safari, but it is very difficult to avoid that for me.


When the MacBook gets unresponsive, I'm often using the purge command in terminal, which helps for a short while but not for a long time
Closing Safari and starting fresh also helps (but is annoying)
Restarting the Mac also helps, but I do not want to do that each day - I usually do it every 5..12 days.
Many websites have auto-play flash.

Disable it in Safari, and you will be prompted to play them if you click on it.

Set Adobe Flash to ASK!



That way all the unwonted one wont eat up your memory.