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matt07lx

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 31, 2008
21
0
I'm sure this is a common question, but I was wondering if anybody could suggest steps to take to improve the performance of an aging Macbook. It currently has 2 GB of RAM, but I just ordered 6 GB to push it to the max.

Beyond that, what can be done short of a clean reinstallation? Currently running Leopard. I don't have the money right now for a new machine, so I'm hoping to extend its useful life for a while...

Thanks!
 

blevins321

macrumors 68030
Dec 24, 2010
2,768
96
Detroit, MI
Snow Leopard would help immensely it is basically just an optimized version of Leopard that removes a lot of the bloat.
 
Last edited:

wrinkster22

macrumors 68030
Jun 11, 2011
2,623
7
Toronto
How much would you want to spend? You could get a 64 gb sad and an opti bay HD so your computer would boot faster. A 64 sad is around 120$ and an opti bay is around 40$ (you loose your disk drive) This and a clean install of the OS would make it much faster
 

matt07lx

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 31, 2008
21
0
Forgive my ignorance, but is a sad? Do you mean a solid-state drive? Since I'm already spending money on the RAM I was thinking of cheap (or free...) solutions. I might do a Snow Leopard upgrade since I already have the disc (haven't gotten around to doing it on this machine yet....I know, a little behind). A fresh install would definitely be better than an upgrade though right? Would an upgrade carry over all the mess from my current setup?
 

wrinkster22

macrumors 68030
Jun 11, 2011
2,623
7
Toronto
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

My bad it is ssd stupid auto correct

Do a clean install.
 

Young Spade

macrumors 68020
Mar 31, 2011
2,156
3
Tallahassee, Florida
Forgive my ignorance, but is a sad? Do you mean a solid-state drive? Since I'm already spending money on the RAM I was thinking of cheap (or free...) solutions. I might do a Snow Leopard upgrade since I already have the disc (haven't gotten around to doing it on this machine yet....I know, a little behind). A fresh install would definitely be better than an upgrade though right? Would an upgrade carry over all the mess from my current setup?

Well if you're restoring from a time machine backup, you'll put all the files back, but people generally upgrade fresh and then restore.

Anyway, if you plan on getting a SSD, get a 128gb one at least. And I'd hold off until black Friday or something; they go for around 200 for a good one (Intel/Samsung) right now, but I'm personally waiting until Black Friday to get one for around 100 along with the optibay for 25 bucks or so for the internal HD in my MBP.

Install the RAM, fresh install of SL, and wait until this holiday for the SSD and optibay. Read up on the SSDs though before you do anything.
 

nomer6ti

macrumors newbie
Nov 6, 2011
1
0
I'm sure this is a common question, but I was wondering if anybody could suggest steps to take to improve the performance of an aging Macbook. It currently has 2 GB of RAM, but I just ordered 6 GB to push it to the max.

Beyond that, what can be done short of a clean reinstallation? Currently running Leopard. I don't have the money right now for a new machine, so I'm hoping to extend its useful life for a while...

Thanks!
Hi:)
What memory did you get? I'm looking to upgrade but i can't find any DDR2 667MHz chips.
Thanks
 

minifridge1138

macrumors 65816
Jun 26, 2010
1,175
197
Lots of things can cause a system to slow down.

Here's two things to look at:

1) What percentage of your hard drive is full? For various reasons, as the disk gets fuller it also gets slower.

2) What programs launch at startup for your user?
 

Sonhascome

macrumors 6502
Feb 18, 2010
272
0
Maryland
How much would you want to spend? You could get a 64 gb sad and an opti bay HD so your computer would boot faster. A 64 sad is around 120$ and an opti bay is around 40$ (you loose your disk drive) This and a clean install of the OS would make it much faster

I would definitely go this route. SSDs are quick and one of the main things that kinda bottlenecks performance these days is the old hard drives
 
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