How does battery health relate to performance?

[Steve'sAdam]

I'm rocking a 13" mid-2009 MBP with 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo. One year ago I replaced the original HDD with an 128 GB SSD and went to 8 GB RAM.

At first I had considerable performance boost, but have been having some issues more recently. Bringing the computer up from shut down, sleep or out of a dead battery has become extremely taxing (takes 10 minutes to get apps running- lots of spinning wheels and bouncy apps, constantly killing apps and reopening just to get them up). Once I am up though everything runs relatively smoothly (still a little more laggy than you would expect with SSD and 8 GB RAM).

The battery does need to be replaced- 1346 cycles + replace soon warning. But I'm wondering if the battery is my issue? Or is the 2.26 GHz too antiquated to handle OS X 10.9? There are also only 10.5 GB free on the SSD that could be an issue.

I plan on buying an Air or new MBP within the year. I just want this one to be as functional as possible if I sell it or keep it as a secondary system.

Any thoughts or comments on what I should do with this old girl are certainly appreciated.Thanks!

 

[joshlalonde]

I'm not sure, but I suspect if you keep it plugged in and the performance is the same, then there's more to it than battery. Maybe it's time to get a new computer? Upgrading it gives it a boost but doesn't mean it'll last forever. Sucks though :/

I would backup your files now.

Edit: missed the last part. Just clean off all your files and put them somewhere else, re-install OS X and see how it performs. I would sell it so you can get the most out of it. Good luck!

 

[A4orce84]

I agree with joshlalonde, it might be time to do a fresh (clean) install of OSX Mavericks. When was the last time you did that?

I know over time if you keep upgrading (Lion --> Mountain Lion --> Mavericks) a lot of crud can stick around through the upgrade process. Mind you, it's not like upgrading from windows XP ---> Windows 7, but I'm of the mindset that it's always better to start with a fresh install when experiencing performance issues. It also gives you a chance to get rid of a lot of old apps you might not be using, and update all the apps you do use to their latest equivalents.

Good luck!