Forced to use 2007 Pro, help get best out of it.

[elf69]

I am forced to sell my 2009 unibody macbook.
2.26GHz 8GB ram 240GB SSD running sierra.

My car needs an MOT and few bits.
So it is sold just waiting on payment.

Anyway I have to use my 17" Santa Rosa pro.
it is 2.4GH 3GB ram and 500GB HDD running El Capitan.

I use my mac for work and with my unibody when at work with usual apps running the monitor app shows I use little over 4GB ram.

The pro has 3GB ram.
Is the swap file on a HDD going to impact speed/running of apps severely?
The laptop will take 4GB ram max.
I'd rather not spend much on it as I am trying to put some money aside for another macbook once car done.

These are what I have open at work:

Chrome with 3-4 tabs
Firefox with 1-2 tabs
Thunderbird
Skype
imessage

And some times need open word or excel, but when done I always quit not just close it.

thanks for any help.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

For that use case you are probably better off selling it as a collectors item and buying a chrome book.

 

[elf69]

Chrome book no good to me!

I used one useless!

mainly, no imessage which I use to connect to clients and such.
chrome book (or the one i used) would not allow me to save files to a usb stick or use usb printer/HDD.

I have to use the pro for a about a month or so.
The pro not worth much to sell but the unibody is, so I have to sell to fund car repair.

You are usually a great help but this does not help me.
I need to run the list in first post.

I know it will be slow but looking for suggestions to help it run best it can until can buy a refurb macbook/macbook pro.

 

[tubeexperience]

The 2009 MBP supports up to 6GB RAM.

Also, I would use Safari instead of Chrome because the former is a much less resource intensive browser.

For that use case you are probably better off selling it as a collectors item and buying a chrome book.

Recommending Chromebook is a disservice to most users when they can buy Windows laptops for the same prices.

 

[sinoka56]

always install an ssd

 

[Samuelsan2001]

The 2009 MBP supports up to 6GB RAM.

Also, I would use Safari instead of Chrome because the former is a much less resource intensive browser.



Recommending Chromebook is a disservice to most users when they can buy Windows laptops for the same prices.

Not if they just use chrome and a videoconference messaging service, a windows laptop at that price will have a slow spinning hard drive a crappy atom processor and a huge unwieldy OS to run on the anemic specs. Chromebooks at least a fairly rapid for the cost and the OS is very light on resources.

Elf 69 missed the need for iMessage the but another messaging service would work just fine surely not all your customers are on Apple devices??

To be honest the only real way to speed that old machine up is to stick an SSD in it the cheapest one you can find.

https://www.amazon.com/Kingspec-SAT...=UTF8&qid=1480506294&sr=8-2&keywords=64gb+SSD

 

[Rodan52]

For starters I assume you would rather not spend any money on this device if possible so the usual "speed up my Mac" rules apply.
Free up at least 25% of your storage for virtual memory.
Check your startup items and make sure you are not running things like helpers, antivirus, Activity display monitors, DropBox (or similar cloud services), VPN's in other words anything you don't absolutely need.
Get rid of all the files on your desktop or put them in one folder.
Get rid of all unnecessary extensions in your browsers or at least deactivate them.
Turn off transparency and animation in preferences.
Reset SMC.
Basically if you just lighten the load on your RAM as much as possible you should be able to get by until you can afford something better.

 

[Fzang]

You don't need to do anything. You're not running into memory issues. You're reading a number you don't understand and now you obsess over it.

 

[elf69]

Thanks guys but it capped at 4GB ram as it a 2007 pro NOT 2009.

2009 unibody i have sold.

@Fzang please enlighten me on the ram.
I may be reading it wrong.

I need to use chrome as I sign into our work account on it.
I know chrome is a hog for resources, but it just has to be.

Im looking at getting a 2013/2014 macbook pro but worked out gonna take 8-10 weeks to get the funds once car fixed.

Edit:

here is my 2009 unibody monitor capture at 13:44 today:

Memory used is, well memory used out of my 8GB?
or is it only the 4.56GB on the right hand side?

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Thanks guys but it capped at 4GB ram as it a 2007 pro NOT 2009.

2009 unibody i have sold.

@Fzang please enlighten me on the ram.
I may be reading it wrong.

I need to use chrome as I sign into our work account on it.
I know chrome is a hog for resources, but it just has to be.

Im looking at getting a 2013/2014 macbook pro but worked out gonna take 8-10 weeks to get the funds once car fixed.

Edit:

here is my 2009 unibody monitor capture at 13:44 today:
View attachment 675401

Memory used is, well memory used out of my 8GB?
or is it only the 4.56GB on the right hand side?

Yeah that is fine but it is not an indication of how the other machine will organise its ram, OS X will optimise it to what ram it has available. Until you try it out on the 2007 it's difficult to tell.

 

[elf69]

OK I'll setup the old mac tomorrow after work as busy tonite, then compare side by side.

 

[Clint_Barton]

I use my mac for work and with my unibody when at work with usual apps running the monitor app shows I use little over 4GB ram.

The pro has 3GB ram.
Is the swap file on a HDD going to impact speed/running of apps severely?
The laptop will take 4GB ram max.
I'd rather not spend much on it as I am trying to put some money aside for another macbook once car done.

This laptop can take 6gb ram max http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...k-pro-core-2-duo-2.4-17-santa-rosa-specs.html

 

[elf69]

indeed sir but a 4GB stick of DDR2 is somewhat expensive.

I only need it for 2-3 months while I save for a refurbished macbook pro.

So rather not spend much on it as the resale value here in UK is very low.

 

[Fzang]

Memory used is, well memory used out of my 8GB?
or is it only the 4.56GB on the right hand side?

Basically, as a normal user, you should look at the graph. As long as it's green, you're good. Only when it turns yellow or red does it mean you're actually out of RAM.

Both memory compression and swap sizes are really low, meaning that you've been nowhere near running out of RAM. If you look at the other numbers you'll almost always see a high RAM usage, as recent things are kept in memory, but in a low priority state that can be taken over by other processes if necessary.

"Memory used" really means "all memory used, in every way, even if it's not really important".

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201464

I should add that this fancy pancy memory management was introduced after OS X 10.9, so I'm not sure if your 2007 will be able to use it.

 

[elf69]

OK so he is the 2007 pro with about same stuff running....

Graph still green.
Feels snappy still, not like the 2009 but it has not got an ssd.
I think I could get on with it for a bit even though I hate the keyboard compared to the 2009.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

OK so he is the 2007 pro with about same stuff running....

View attachment 675584

Graph still green.
Feels snappy still, not like the 2009 but it has not got an ssd.
I think I could get on with it for a bit even though I hate the keyboard compared to the 2009.

Yeah that's what I expected, I have tried to explain this many times but people seem to have some sort of weird psychopathy when it comes to ram!!

 

[elf69]

I'm from a PC background an the monitoring software I used to use was easier to read.

Just what I had and what was currently used by programs.

Mac monitor seem to give (to me) too much information which I do not understand.

I would expect more ram use and swap file compared to an SSD a it just cannot read and write at high speed.

The machine seems ok bar the keyboard that misses letters out unlike my 2009 macbook.

Love the big screen though even if not led.
But the 2008 led version I have read will fit with minor mods to internal wiring.

 

[fs454]

Spend $60 on a 128GB SSD and dump the hard drive. That's the only thing that will make that computer manageable.

 

[elf69]

I have a 120GB SSD but with work files and such I used about 119 on the 240GB in the 2009 macbook so not big enough.

It will do for about 3 months til get a newer macbook

 

[fs454]

The optical bay hard drive adapter is like $5 on amazon - just move your 500GB over one slot, fresh install on the 120GB as your boot drive and excess files go on the 500GB. I'd do just about anything to get an SSD in a computer like that if it were my primary.

 

[elf69]

it my work machine for about 3 months.

at home i have an imac

 

[LegacyUser12]

I am forced to sell my 2009 unibody macbook.
2.26GHz 8GB ram 240GB SSD running sierra.

My car needs an MOT and few bits.
So it is sold just waiting on payment.

Anyway I have to use my 17" Santa Rosa pro.
it is 2.4GH 3GB ram and 500GB HDD running El Capitan.

I use my mac for work and with my unibody when at work with usual apps running the monitor app shows I use little over 4GB ram.

The pro has 3GB ram.
Is the swap file on a HDD going to impact speed/running of apps severely?
The laptop will take 4GB ram max.
I'd rather not spend much on it as I am trying to put some money aside for another macbook once car done.

These are what I have open at work:

Chrome with 3-4 tabs
Firefox with 1-2 tabs
Thunderbird
Skype
imessage

And some times need open word or excel, but when done I always quit not just close it.

thanks for any help.

Sounds like we are in the same boat. I'm trying to keep my late 08 unibody alive!

It too has 500gb upgraded HD, just went from 2 to 4 RAM but really wasn't stellar impressive.
What helped me out big time with making it run leaner and cleaner was a mixture of RAM monitoring/cleaning apps, a duplicate file manager app and manually deleting some useless big chunks of stuff I was e-hoarding from nursing school.
I'll get you the app names next time I fire old faithful up.

But your totes not in the dust friend.