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Simple things get bogged down like clicking on a link or opening an app. It may freeze up the computer for 30 seconds. Opening MS Word, Excel or iTunes can take 60-90 seconds. I see the spiny rainbow thing all the time.
Firefox is using up the bulk of my ram with just a few tabs open.
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Browsers in general, Firefox in specific are memory hogs. .
MS Office apps take a long time to open, due to loading their "special" font menus.
With iTunes, how many songs you got in your library?
Noticing anything when switching apps? What about start up?
The way OS X assigns memory, I wouldn't worry about what activity monitor shows. Your not reaching optimum usage until all the available ram is used and there is some memory compression going on. This is what "memory pressure" shows in activity monitor.