>> Some rather simple operations slow down considerably after the >> system's been up awhile (and I do tend to leave it up for days or >> weeks at a time). I don't recall how long it had been up when I ran >> those tests. I just ran pystone again - it's been up 2 days, 19 hrs >> at the moment - and got significantly better numbers: aahz> What version of OS X and developer tools? I'm a tiny bit aahz> surprised that you say your machine stays up for weeks at a time; aahz> that implies you don't install security updates. On the contrary. Apple doesn't release security updates all that often. I run Software Update daily. If the presence of new software updates was the only reason to reboot I'd almost never reboot. <wink> Just to make sure that was the case I just ran Software Update manually. Nothing is out-of-date (well, except for the fact that I haven't coughed up the dough for 10.3.x yet). I'm running an up-to-date version of 10.2.8. Skip