beach ball all the time

hello there.. i see that some similar problems have been posted before but despite just today downloading the latest version of soulseekQT for mac, i am still unable to use this program due to constant beach ball. seems to be about 7 seconds of useable time and then about 10 seconds of hanging, which never stops until i restart soulseek and then the problem starts up again very quickly. i am not sharing a huge amount of files, if that makes a difference, and my computer is relatively up to snuff (imac with core duo from a few years ago) with all latest updates etc...