Why is BFP running so slowly?

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James - I was also having this problem (hence '2 people have this problem'). The program would rapidly slow down and, by the time I got to 'Tell Us Apart', I was waiting at least 20 seconds for each individual 'dah' and 'gah'. I am a software developer but I knew that my pc was not running optimally. I suspected a Trojan.

I bit the bullet, backed up any required data files, reformatted my drive and reinstalled Windows (XP), then an up-to-date virus checker.

BFP is now working beautifully. The clock ticks over every second (which mine wasn't and I suspect yours is not) and the sessions are fast. The sessions did not pick up from where I left off, although I suspect I could have saved the data from my previous 4 sessions, but I was happy to restart and performance was so much better that I knocked over the first 2 sessions before I knew it.

I'm not suggesting that you reinstall your operating system, and I note you are running on a Mac, but knowing that in my case it was my pc software at fault, I would consider, at least, reinstalling BFP (there is a comment from another user here that this worked for them) and ensuring that you know what programs are running in the background (you will have several). Programs such as Anti-Virus software should be configured to ignore BFP and any specialised desktop managers turned off (I had an nVidia desktop which was not really needed). The disks should be defragged, and make sure that they are not 99% full (you need some spare disk capacity so that BFP can swap optimally between RAM and disk).

I have read a couple of comments from people who have performance problems that continue even when they install on another computer. I would make sure that the 2 machines were not networked and that they were not possibly susceptible to the same viruses or trojans (e.g. 2 pcs in the same home).

I'm new; I've only run BFP for the first five sessions or so. But I'll comment anyway. :)

I too am running on a newer Mac, though not as shiny and powerful as the one described above , and I'm also seeing a good deal of sluggishness on some of the exercises (mostly on Tell Us Apart, though I've seen some in Listen And Do as well)... not as bad as Mr. Beringer's situation, above, but enough to slow me down at times. The Mac's Activity Monitor shows nothing running in the background except the standard kernel activities - as much of a clean slate as the processor will provide.

It's not a terror or anything. I'm still enjoying BFP. But I am curious whether the speed issue is showing up among other users, or Mac users in particular, but just hasn't been serious enough for most to complain. :)

I also experience sluggish response on my new shiny new iMac at 3Ghz and 4GB memory.

I just finished an execise in Listen and Do...and I made three mistales with the mouse slections/moves.. It was slow and the [oints took a long time to register. I don't have any security ware running than the iMac firewall..I beleive there is something slow going on with the BFP software..iMac runnning Intel dual procs @2.3G and 3 Gigs of memory

Just followed your instructions on Mac Maintenance Guide and now my mac won't boot and I have to do a full re-install. Horrendous. I think I would like a full refund as the software has done nothing but cause me and others problems!

"Solutions" such as checking to see if a "security program is running," rebooting your Mac, or reinstalling BFP waste the customer's time. The issue is that BFP was written for the old PowerPC platform, and runs like a slug under Rosetta on Intel Macs with plenty of resources. It's unusable for me. Customers deserve a modern program that works.