Help with clunky MBP early 2008

[sdavis81]

Hello all,
Would like some advice, computer seems to be running real slow.
Early 2008 non unibody MBP. Always ran Fusion version 2, recently upgraded to Lion and Fusion 4.1. Now everything is slow.

I have upgraded from 2 to 6 GB RAM and bigger (500gb) HD about a year ago. Recent software upgrades to MacOS and Fusion noticeably slow.

On Activity Monitor:
Wired RAM 1.67
Active 2.83
Inactive 1.47

Why do I have 1.47 free? Come to think of it, every time I have ever checked this even when slow there is always 1-2GB RAM free and not being used.

I have Fusion set at 1.0GB RAM and 1 core (this is dual core Intel chip)

The "Page Outs" is 980mb, don't know if that is a lot or a little.

Any thoughts on what I can change? Settings to check?

My HD is 90% full. Maybe it is that and I need a bigger one again.

Thanks in advance

 

[Bear]

The "Page Outs" is 980mb, don't know if that is a lot or a little.

My HD is 90% full. Maybe it is that and I need a bigger one again.

50GB free should be okay, however you should see if you have anything you could clean up.

As for 980 MB, that depends on over how much time that has accumulated. If it's over days of uptime, it's fine. Hours it's probably fine. However if it happens quickly, another GB of ram would help. (Yes, I know you can't just add 1 GB, so it's whatever increment you need to in the system.)

Also, try 2 things with your fusion set up. first.. Presuming you're running Windows, do a disk cleanup followed by a disk defrag. And then fusion should allow you to compress your virtual disk. This should recover some disk space on you Mac and probably speed up things when fusion is running.