I hate my MacBook!!

Have you tried the following:

Reinstall OS?
Upgrade ssd?
Upgrade RAM?

Meister said:

Have you tried the following:

Reinstall OS?
Upgrade ssd?
Upgrade RAM?

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Also what software is being run?

I have noticed that Safari will sometimes get into a beach ball snit for no obvious reason. Probably some kind of near-deadlock situation where everything is idle and just waiting for everything else.

...Cougar?

Eldiablojoe said:

Meister, I have reinstalled the OS a year or two ago.

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When did your system start to slow down?

Eldiablojoe said:

I have never upgraded RAM or Processor.

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The processor is non-upgradable anyway.
Upgrading the sotrage from hdd to ssd would give you an immediate boost.
What are your system specs?

Eldiablojoe said:

Maybe I don't have enough juice for the limited amount of computing I do (Web surfing, iPhoto, maybe some MS Word, iTunes, that's about it).

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Those apps should run without a problem.
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Pakaku said:

...Cougar?

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Like a Milf, but older

If you want to replace your macbook get whatever new MBA is coming out (or just get the current one as they are fantastic).

We don't know what is coming with the iPad Pro obviously but the chances that it will run an OS that allows the kind of flexibility and function you get from a laptop is very slim. I say this as someone who uses a MBA and an iPad every day and I love both of them but if I had to give one up it would be the machine running iOS simply out of necessity.

Eldiablojoe said:

I hate my MacBook!! It is a 2009 white MacBook. It runs like it is a Windows machine, lots of lag, spinning beach balls of death, crappy crappy crappy!!! I've been to Apple a few times and the diagnostics never reveal anything wrong.

So, that being said, I am dying to replace it. I am looking at the rumored machines to be released this Spring, the MBA-12, and the 12.2 inch iPadAirPlus.

Can anyone shed any light on what (hypothetically - since there are no official details available) might be the difference, pros/cons of each?

I am going to buy one of them, I just can't decide which to prefer.

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I had a 2010 white MacBook that was doing the same thing. I lost my temper over it and threw it across the room. That felt good. It no longer works and the drive and memory modules fell out of the bottom when the cover fell off.

I bought a 2012 Mac Mini a few days later. It still lags sometimes like when I use iFlicks and I try to switch to another app while iFlicks is working but that may be a memory thing because I still have only 4GB in it.

Jut be aware that you may still have these problems onm whatever you get so get as much RAM as you can afford. You can't add more later like on a 2012 Mini.

Eldiablojoe said:

Sorry- Confused them. In my part of the world, Mountain Lions are the same thing as Cougars (the four-legged kind ) and Pumas.


Here's the specs...

Image

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2GB RAM. lol.

Dude upgrade it to 8GB, upgrade HDD to SSD. It'll be a new laptop.

keysofanxiety said:

2GB RAM. lol.

Dude upgrade it to 8GB, upgrade HDD to SSD. It'll be a new laptop.

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*nods*

Yeah, if you can get an upgrade to SSD and RAM to minimum of 4 (though, you might as well get 8 while you're at it), then you'll be golden.

That, or you can buy a new laptop...

OR you can just do both, and sell the old one

2GB of RAM and a 5 year-old hard drive. There's you problem.

I'm running Yosemite on a 2008 MacBook. It has a HDD (not and SSD) and 8GB RAM and it runs fine.

I'd say it's a combo of an old, possibly dying HDD and the minimum required amount of RAM installed. That's a killer.

the 2gb ram is the huge bottleneck of this macbook. no surprise it runs like crap.

money well spent (i confirmed your mb runs 8gb ram):

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/8566DDR3S8GP/

how to change the hdd to ssd (250gb for around 100 bucks):

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...nibody-how-to-upgrade-replace-hard-drive.html

for around 200 bucks you will quadruple the ram and triple the disk speed this way.

w

Eldiablojoe said:

Sorry- Confused them. In my part of the world, Mountain Lions are the same thing as Cougars (the four-legged kind ) and Pumas.


Here's the specs...

Image

Click to expand...

Well, you have a sum of mistakes:

1- the last OSX version which performed ok with hard disks was Mountain Lion;

2- 2GB of RAM is ok for Snow Leopard, but it's not acceptable for Mavericks or Yosemite. Apple just allow you to install newer OS to think seriously about buying a new computer.

3- You should think about upgrading your hard disk drive to a SSD. If not, sell your Macbook for someone who will do. A SSD is the only way to keep using this Mac.

Eldiablojoe said:

Sorry- Confused them. In my part of the world, Mountain Lions are the same thing as Cougars (the four-legged kind ) and Pumas.

Here's the specs...

Image

Click to expand...

Without even going into some of the comments above. I still need to have some more info:

At what point did your system start lagging?
What apps do you run?

Despite being a bit underspeced, your OS itself should not lag like that.
Before you start upgrading, consider the upgrade order of:

1. Reinstall Mac OS
2. Exchange your hdd for an ssd (you should really do this)
3. If there is some $$$ left upgrade your ram to 4 or 8 gb

You could also bring it into the store and have them do a hardware check.

Meister said:

Without even going into some of the comments above. I still need to have some more info:

At what point did your system start lagging?
What apps do you run?
...

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Yes, exactly. Something has clearly gone wrong. It would be nice to find out what vs. just start upgrading components basically at random.

Meister said:

3. If there is some $$$ left upgrade your ram to 4 or 8 gb

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LOL. and 2 instant upvotes as usual.

motrek said:

Yes, exactly. Something has clearly gone wrong. It would be nice to find out what vs. just start upgrading components basically at random.

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Jesus, why are people overly helpful on this forum to the point where it's just wasting time. 2GB RAM on the latest OS is an immediate cause for concern - suggesting a RAM upgrade is the exact opposite of 'randomly upgrading components'.

OP, maximum supported RAM on your model is 8GB. 2x4GB DDR3 SODIMM @1066MHz. Buy the extra RAM and fit it.

Download S.M.A.R.T. Utility -- if there's a warning then your HDD's failing, you should immediately replace with an SSD, in addition to upgrading your RAM. Download it here. http://cloudfront.volitans-software.com/smartutility312.zip

Of course we'd recommend swapping it for an SSD anyway, but SUtility should give you an idea if there are corruptions on the HDD, which will compound the issue of it running slowly in tandem with the limited RAM.

That's really all you need to do. RAM upgrade, HDD>SSD upgrade, and it's a brand-new computer. Running any other tests to try and diagnose an issue when you've got 2GB RAM is an absolute waste of time.

motrek said:

Yes, exactly. Something has clearly gone wrong. It would be nice to find out what vs. just start upgrading components basically at random.

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What's gone is the fact that this is a 2009 computer that is expected to run the latest OS and software well. That is not a reasonable expectation. RAM and the HDD need to be upgraded. It could also be that the HDD is on its way out, especially if it is the original drive from 2009.

But the 2 GB RAM is a real bottleneck and coupled with an old HDD, well, you're looking at a performance disaster.

cycledance said:

LOL. and 2 instant upvotes as usual.

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I noticed that, too. You mention: Get more ram! (no matter what the issue is) and there is a crowd that upvotes you immediately.

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keysofanxiety said:

Jesus, why are people overly helpful on this forum to the point where it's just wasting time. 2GB RAM on the latest OS is an immediate cause for concern - suggesting a RAM upgrade is the exact opposite of 'randomly upgrading components'.

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Recommending to buy upgrades before you know what the issue is, is not good advice.
Macbook Airs with 2gb ram run Yosemite perfectly fine, so we know it is not RAM related.

We've had posters here who went to the store and the "genius" recommended to upgrade the RAM because the macbook was lagging.
After a $150 upgrade to 16gb (for office apps) the macbook was still lagging of course. There is a crowd on here that just recommends a ram upgrade to anyone who had a slow mac, without even trying to understand what the real issue is. They basically turn every thread into a ram thread.

Look at pages-out and swap, if there are to many, is ram related. (It's true that people buy 16GB ram machines just to surf the internet around here, listen to Meister)
Anyway, some more ram never hurts. I would advise a 4GB module (for a total of 5GB), it's cheap and the rest of the money can be spent in SSD.
For $100($60 SSD + $40 ram) you can give life back to your old machine.

Meister said:

Macbook Airs with 2gb ram run Yosemite perfectly fine, so we know it is not RAM related

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Yes, because MBAs have SSDs. When OS X runs out of RAM it'll briefly utilise hard-drive space as virtual memory. On an SSD this is barely noticeable due to the quick access times and read/write speeds. On a conventional hard-drive, writing to the hard-drive cripples OS X's performance.

With 2GB RAM it's going to be paging, no question.

Yes, they can shut down often with the option 'reopen windows when logging back in' disabled and do a few other things to increase general performance but 8GB RAM upgrade & SSD will fix the issues, guaranteed. It's also likely that the hard-drive could be corrupted due to its age/wear&tear and that's why I enclosed a link to S.M.A.R.T. Utility to check this if they want.

So a few points:

1) Even if the issues are related to a corrupted HDD, replacing this with another HDD isn't going to solve the 2GB RAM bottleneck and performance will still be slow when it pages.
2) The RAM will cause an issue, as explained above.
3) Maxing out the RAM and putting an SSD in will make it run better-than-new. That's guaranteed.

So that's why people make these recommendations -- it's not unhelpful and it's not a knee-jerk reaction. The posters here are very experienced with these issues, and there's only so much you can do when you've got hardware limitations. Other suggestions are simply a waste of time, so people aren't being unhelpful -- they're being succinct.

Meister said:

Recommending to buy upgrades before you know what the issue is, is not good advice.
Macbook Airs with 2gb ram run Yosemite perfectly fine, so we know it is not RAM related.

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I doubt it runs Yosemite "perfectly" fine. It runs a "plain" fine at best. When switching tasks, it would swap faster than a HDD, but it would lag more if it had 8GB installed. For most users it can be unnoticeable, and that's why the first upgrade is a SSD, but if you can afford for more RAM, it doesn't hurt.

I played a little with my Mini with 16GB of RAM before upgrading the HDD to a SSD. The improvement from 4GB to 16GB is noticeable even for simple tasks like browsing. It doesn't give the wow factor of a SSD, but it is noticeable. Of course, I'd probably note the improvement from 4GB to 8GB, but I was looking for maxing it out for running RAM-intensive algorithms. I usually reach the red area of memory usage, so it's when I try to improving the algorithms to use less resources.

For most users, the general advice is 8GB of RAM plus a 250GB SSD. It's not way more expensive than 4GB + 120GB SSD and is more future-proof. When someone says "everything is lagging", "a lot of spinning BBoDs", of course he doesn't need a new GPU. The issue is linked to RAM and I/O.