[rhinoceros]

Do you use chrome by any chance?

I had similar issues with my system but has since cleared when I switched to safari. Ive been really throttling the system recently and its been handling parallelisation better than ever. Specially with high memory tasks

Nah, I use FireFox. But the thing is, with ML I could have had like 10 programs open and not run into memory problems. With Mavericks, I get memory problems even if I have nothing else running..

[Wallysb01]

The AppNap and compressed memory features in particular seem like they could give those systems a boost and help extend their usable life span.

I have to second waiting for the 10.9.1 release at minimum. Often times Apple gets that out inside a month.

Also, are you running out of RAM? Do you have 96GB installed? I can't imagine that this whole compressed memory thing does much good for serious work. Maybe it saves the OS a GB or 2 for lightly used things that load up in RAM, but in general, if you need stuff in RAM, why would you want it compressed? Then you have to uncompress and recompress it upon every use? If that's how you cram something that needs 128GB into 96GB, its going to be painfully slow. And I don't think that's even what it is doing. This is probably a feature for machines with <8GB of RAM....

[mcnelson.phd]

Also, are you running out of RAM? Do you have 96GB installed? I can't imagine that this whole compressed memory thing does much good for serious work. Maybe it saves the OS a GB or 2 for lightly used things that load up in RAM, but in general, if you need stuff in RAM, why would you want it compressed? Then you have to uncompress and recompress it upon every use? If that's how you cram something that needs 128GB into 96GB, its going to be painfully slow. And I don't think that's even what it is doing. This is probably a feature for machines with <8GB of RAM....

We're currently OK with RAM usage and capacity, and my intention wasn't that compressed memory would allow us to analyze a larger dataset than the system is capable of handling.

My main line of thought was that compressed memory and AppNap would help keep systems like our iMacs, which are used for light analyses by multiple users, to last longer between hardware replacements. Basically, these systems are used for small genome assemblies, light 16S analysis, Sanger sequence analysis, etc. along with basic things like using MS Office doing statistical analyses. Because most users would have multiple programs open as they work on and analyze their data, something like AppNap could help extend the usable lifespan of these systems so we don't have to buy a whole new system every year or two.

For heavier analyses we would rely on our linux clusters, so we're not trying to skimp on our computing capabilities.

And as I thought when I first posted, it looks like I'm better off waiting to see what happens with the first few point updates to stabilize the OS. I've also heard from some colleagues that some older applications that they and we use are no longer supported, so we'll have to look at whether or not we still need them and if it's worth paying for upgrades or if something else is available that we might try instead.