My girlfriend's original 2008 macbook air is showing strange symptoms.
The biggest issue is is grindingly slow. I installed lion on it about 6 months ago hoping upgrading would help it out, but it just made it much, much slower. Like, 10 minutes to start up, several minutes to open safari. Last night we downgraded it to snow leopard and it's overall a bit better, but it's still kind of slow. Entering text usually has a delay of several seconds between hitting the keys and having the letters display on the screen, even if no programs are open. Watching a video results in about a frame every other second.
I checked activity monitor, and it shows that at any given time 80% of the system resources are being used, even when no programs are open. There are no processes listed taking up more than a percent or two. The user percentage will be at 1-5%, the system percent will be at 80% and the idle will be at 15%. Even after a fresh restart. The fan is almost always running at it's highest speed, and is very audible. The processor gets up to about 65° C.
I think it's probably an issue with the processor, as i've experienced similar symptoms on a hackintosh I built not long ago.
I replaced the battery about a year ago because the original swelled and bent the case, and apple wouldn't cover it. The onboard keyboard and trackpad stopped a few months before that. I'm not afraid to open up the case and poke around, but everything looks fairly clean. I was afraid dust build up might have caused fan issues.
We'd just like to keep it running (at reasonable speeds) for a little while longer, as it's clear she'll need a new computer. But, we just can't afford it now. Any idea on what we can do?
The biggest issue is is grindingly slow. I installed lion on it about 6 months ago hoping upgrading would help it out, but it just made it much, much slower. Like, 10 minutes to start up, several minutes to open safari. Last night we downgraded it to snow leopard and it's overall a bit better, but it's still kind of slow. Entering text usually has a delay of several seconds between hitting the keys and having the letters display on the screen, even if no programs are open. Watching a video results in about a frame every other second.
I checked activity monitor, and it shows that at any given time 80% of the system resources are being used, even when no programs are open. There are no processes listed taking up more than a percent or two. The user percentage will be at 1-5%, the system percent will be at 80% and the idle will be at 15%. Even after a fresh restart. The fan is almost always running at it's highest speed, and is very audible. The processor gets up to about 65° C.
I think it's probably an issue with the processor, as i've experienced similar symptoms on a hackintosh I built not long ago.
I replaced the battery about a year ago because the original swelled and bent the case, and apple wouldn't cover it. The onboard keyboard and trackpad stopped a few months before that. I'm not afraid to open up the case and poke around, but everything looks fairly clean. I was afraid dust build up might have caused fan issues.
We'd just like to keep it running (at reasonable speeds) for a little while longer, as it's clear she'll need a new computer. But, we just can't afford it now. Any idea on what we can do?
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