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Best way to make my Mac faster?

conch575

conch575

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 29, 2009
399
1
Sydney, Australia
I have a white Macbook which I purchased in March last year. It's still fast, but not as fast as it used to be, especially when I boot it up. How could I make it run faster and free up some drive space?

Specs:
Version: 10.5.7
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Memory: 2 GB
 
conch575 said:
I have a white Macbook which I purchased in March last year. It's still fast, but not as fast as it used to be, especially when I boot it up. How could I make it run faster and free up some drive space?

Specs:
Version: 10.5.7
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Memory: 2 GB
Click to expand...

Repair Disk Permissions I think... clear any unnecessary crap from your hard drive... (use Disk Inventory X to look up what crap you have).... Make sure your login items aren't cluttered with things you don't use or don't even know exist... Good luck!
 
by login items your refering to his desktop? because i was so used to putting everything on my desktop in windows that i did it when i switched to mac. But as i learned, it slows it down, especially during boot up, so try that. i only have about 4 icons now, three of them folders.

also, im sure you have already done this, uninstall and apps you dont need.

and if you use safari, clear the cache every so often, speeds it up

and ya, repairing disk permitions helped me.

also, im not sure how safe this is, might wana ask around. but if you use time machine, if its backed up, get rid of things that your most likely not gona need. just cluttering files orr temp files. there always on the time machine if you need em. but be careful if your drive fails:(
 
A good app to use is Monolingual It will save Gigs worth of HD space removing unnecessary keyboard layouts, languages you don't use and certian tid bits not necessary for your specific architecture mine sped up pretty good after I got rid of a few languages I don't use Chinese or Russian so why do I need those languages in any of the apps I use. You just have to be really careful about what you let it delete sometimes.
 
Clearing hard drive space isn't going to help unless your drive is actually getting full. Less than 10 or 15% free may cause you problems. Other than that, forget about it being a disk issue.

And I can also tell you that repairing permissions will have zero effect on speed except in the rarest of circumstances.

Activity Monitor is going to be your best bet to find if anything is eating unnecessary CPU cycles or memory. Sort by CPU usage first and watch for things acting strangely. The check memory usage if nothing is strange in the CPU area.

Also, look in system prefs under the Accounts section, then click on Login Items and see if you can get rid of anything there.

It would be unusual, but I've heard of people needing to reseat a stick of RAM, so just to be safe, check under About This Mac and make sure it says 2GB.

Mac OS X is not Windows - you should not be having gradual performance dropoffs, culminating in a reinstall of the OS (like I used to do about every 6 months on XP).

If your slowdown is actual and not just in your own mind, there is a reason for it and Activity Monitor is the place to start.
 
Stupid me - the first thing I should have mentioned was adding memory. Your Macbook can probably support at least 4GB and maybe 6GB of memory. That's the first place to start in making your computer run faster.

4GB for $50 from Data Memory Systems, where I buy RAM.
 
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A 7200 rpm drive helps quite a bit too.
 
Heb1228 said:
Mac OS X is not Windows - you should not be having gradual performance dropoffs, culminating in a reinstall of the OS (like I used to do about every 6 months on XP).
Click to expand...

I hate XP all my family uses it (I have never owned a windows computer) they come to me for tech support and like you said "every 6 months" on average I wind up doing a reinstall that OS is like a pain of glass it breaks very easily when you don't know what the hell you're doing on it. I am getting sick of having to manually remove stubborn viruses that Onecare cant get or sit for hours in front of the damn things to reinstall I am an ARTIST FOR ****S SAKE!!! Sorry about that you triggered a nerve impulse LOL
 
Run disk utility to verify / repair the disk permissions. Run onyx to which does all the OS X maintenance scripts other bits and pieces

I used Monolingual to remove unnecessary things, also i had it strip the ppc software out of the universal apps. That gave me about 2 GB back.
 
toolbox said:
Run disk utility to verify / repair the disk permissions. Run onyx to which does all the OS X maintenance scripts other bits and pieces

I used Monolingual to remove unnecessary things, also i had it strip the ppc software out of the universal apps. That gave me about 2 GB back.
Click to expand...
All these suggestions have already been suggested above and none is likely to help enough to mention.
 
Heb1228 said:
All these suggestions have already been suggested above and none is likely to help enough to mention.
Click to expand...



My dad's 3 year old macbook was running super-slow and I suggest repairing permissions...he said it was like night and day. For what its worth...
 
GfulDedFan said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

A 7200 rpm drive helps quite a bit too.
Click to expand...

A recent upgrade to a 7200 rpm drive made a HUGE difference on my old white core duo macbook.
 
Use Clean My Mac.:apple:

That is, if you don't mind spending a bit of money.


It really helps, you can get the trial for it here:

http://macpaw.com/cleanmymac?campai...all&utm_content=static&utm_campaign=MacRumors

and see how you like it.

It basically deletes all the junk you will never need such as Caches, Logs and stuff like that that would be otherwise nearly impossible to find and wholesomely delete.

It helped me a lot. Deleted about 10 gigs in total and i have it since its release. :D
 
Heb1228 said:
Activity Monitor is going to be your best bet to find if anything is eating unnecessary CPU cycles or memory. Sort by CPU usage first and watch for things acting strangely. The check memory usage if nothing is strange in the CPU area.
Click to expand...

That is a great tip and really the major troubleshooting tool I use when I notice sluggish performance--the culprit is usually obvious and then the fix is (hopefully) just another step or two away!
 
tristangage said:
Repair Disk Permissions I think... clear any unnecessary crap from your hard drive... (use Disk Inventory X to look up what crap you have).... Make sure your login items aren't cluttered with things you don't use or don't even know exist... Good luck!
Click to expand...

for i am a dummie, what is disk permission, exactly, where can i find it on my :apple:?
 
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