Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
1 year later, my Mac is slow..
- Thread starter Rmpl
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
How much RAM have you got? And how large/full is your hard drive? Check the former in Apple Menu==>About this Mac, and the latter by pressing Command-I with Macintosh HD (You hard drive) selected.
Also go with a 7200 RPM as your system drive over a 5400 if that is what you are using. A fresh install of Leopard, 7200 HD, and at least 2 GB of ram is the answer.
I have 1 GB of RAM. But that's irrelevant as I'm not going to upgrade my hardware. I was happy with the performance of my machine when I bought it. A hardware upgrade is both unnecessary and impractical for me. So, no, it's not "the answer." My harddrive is 120 GB and I have 10 GB free. I suspect this is the cause of decreased performance. Unfortunately I don't have time to back up everything I need and reinstall OS X. There's too much stuff, fonts, unorganized data, etc. I just want to know if there there any apps that will boost OS performance. Much appreciated.
^That's the problem. When there's only 10% or less free disk space it does seem to make the system really sluggish. It might be time to organise that unorganised data
or just clear out some unwanted apps/data and free up some extra space. Try WhatSize to see what's taking up the most space on your drive. If you don't use GarageBand for example, you could just delete the app along with a load of sample loops, which are probably taking up a few GB!I was in an identical situation. I bought my MacBook about a year ago and it slowly got sluggish. Just like a Windows box - your Mac can use a complete reinstall now and then, although some people say that's not the case. Especially so if this MacBook is your first mac (it was in my case) and you were only getting to know the system, installing everything you found, etc.
Just installing applications should not cause your Mac to slow down, unless they are installing startup items, nor should having 10GB of free disk space -- this should be more than enough to handle VM swap files, which is why you need free disk space. Reinstalling OSX should certainly not be necessary to address this issue. Do you notice any difference in performance after you restart the Mac? Are you see a lot of beach-balls?
or
You can just buy an external hard drive for 70 bucks and that will give you an extra 320 GB running at 7200RPM. You can install programs on that and when you organized your files you can put the ones you need but don't use as much on that.
You can just buy an external hard drive for 70 bucks and that will give you an extra 320 GB running at 7200RPM. You can install programs on that and when you organized your files you can put the ones you need but don't use as much on that.
Thats not correct. Adding additional apps does NOT slow down OS X. Windows, yes, because that 1980s idea of a "registry".
A re-install is also not "needed" but does seem to help. I used to do this more often as a "spring cleaning", but like the OP I ran out of storage space and could no longer backup. So for over a year I had been running Tiger without a re-install. I noticed no drop in performance.
* As pointed out, free hard drive space can make a big difference. Maybe you can just burn some non-essential items to CD/DVD.
* Make sure your battery is installed. Without the battery in place the computer will drop the processor speed. This is a laptop thing, not a Mac thing. My friends Dell does the same thing.
* If Safari seems slow, try this. Go to users/your username/library/safari In there (I think) is a folder called icons (or something of the sort). Delete that folder. You will loose any icons associated with your bookmarks UNTIL you visit that site again. Under Tiger this can REALLY get Safari back up to speed.
You can also do this through reset. Deselect everything but "web site icons."
Not that we really know enough about the OP's problem to suggest a solution.
Definitely not the case...3 years with my G5 and no complete re-installs, runs better now than when I got it (10.4.11 now, 10.3.5 to start with). Installing apps won't slow it down. Cramming the hard drive almost completely full might.
--Eric
I thought that was a Safari 3 feature, I dont recall being able to reset version 2 but I have never had the need to.
Well then, sine the OP has Tiger, that wont help much!
10.4.11 comes with Safari 3.0.
Dude, two one gig sticks is less than $120 and would significantly increase the performance of your computer.
I don't get this, why in the world 10G free disk space is not enough to run a OS nicely?
VM swap files and such. Not that is not enough room, but 10GB is boarder-line. Less than 5GB is a real issue.