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Is it time for a new Laptop??

A

Anotoneher

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 11, 2011
129
78
Current Macbook:

Late 2008 Aluminum, 2ghz intel duo, 2gb ddr3, running 10.7.4

My problem: the laptop constantly lags, beach ball 50% of the time, Safari locks up non-stop, there's a 5-10 second delay after I double click an icon till the window opens... it just runs incredibly slow.

I run Onyx bi-weekly, never go under 60 gigs hard-drive space, I don't have any virus/malware, keep my mac up-to-date... is it just time to replace?
 
Try doing the following:

Repair disk permissions & verify/repair disk

Try booting from the lion safe mode, or any bootable backup you might have (just to try and isolate issues)

Run a memory test

Clean install lion (did this happen when you first installed lion)?

"Downgrade" to snow leopard... i think intel core 2 duo (notice the 2) is supposed to be the minimum for lion

Get a new hard drive... you can use it as a nice external or new internal even if this computer is toast
 
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Anotoneher said:
Current Macbook:

Late 2008 Aluminum, 2ghz intel duo, 2gb ddr3, running 10.7.4

My problem: the laptop constantly lags, beach ball 50% of the time, Safari locks up non-stop, there's a 5-10 second delay after I double click an icon till the window opens... it just runs incredibly slow.

I run Onyx bi-weekly, never go under 60 gigs hard-drive space, I don't have any virus/malware, keep my mac up-to-date... is it just time to replace?
Click to expand...

I was in the same place as you. I have the macbook 5,1 mine is the 2.4ghz. I also had 2gb ram.

I have replaced the Superdrive with an SSD (Crucial M4) and put the ram to 8GB. It now boots and opens apps faster than my 27" iMac. I had about written my macbook off and was looking to buy a new one. Spent £130.00 and this will do me for another few years....

Clearly anything CPU intensive the macbook still struggles but i'm lucky enough to have the i7 iMac for that.

I can't tell you how much better the macbook is now... Lion works a charm with more more RAM.... I did all my upgrades in one hit so don't know what a difference just the RAM would have made but I have read a lot of post saying lion really needs 4gb..

Carl.
 
Anotoneher said:
My problem: the laptop constantly lags, beach ball 50% of the time, Safari locks up non-stop, there's a 5-10 second delay after I double click an icon till the window opens... it just runs incredibly slow.
Click to expand...
This may help: Performance Tips For Mac OS X
riptideMBP said:
Try doing the following:

Repair disk permissions
Click to expand...
Some people repair, or recommend repairing permissions for situations where it isn't appropriate. Repairing permissions only addresses very specific issues. It is not a "cure all" or a general performance enhancer, and doesn't need to be done on a regular basis. It also doesn't address permissions problems with your files or 3rd party apps.

Five Mac maintenance myths
Disk Utility repairs the permissions for files installed by the Mac OS X Installer, Software Update, or an Apple software installer. It doesn’t repair permissions for your documents, your home folder, and third-party applications.

You can verify or repair permissions only on a disk with Mac OS X installed.
Click to expand...
Does Disk Utility check permissions on all files?

Files that aren't installed as part of an Apple-originated installer package are not listed in a receipt and therefore are not checked. For example, if you install an application using a non-Apple installer application, or by copying it from a disk image, network volume, or other disk instead of installing it via Installer, a receipt file isn't created. This is expected. Some applications are designed to be installed in one of those ways.

Also, certain files whose permissions can be changed during normal usage without affecting their function are intentionally not checked.
Click to expand...
There are times when repairing permissions is appropriate. To do so, here are the instructions:
If repairing permissions results in error messages, some of these messages can be ignored and should be no cause for concern.
 
shinobi-81 said:
Do you have a high page-out rate? 2 GB of RAM might be a bit short.
Click to expand...

That's what I've been thinking. I have done a repair disk permissions & verify/repair disk. I've been thinking of upgrading to 4gb ram but haven't done it yet.

Anyone recommend ram I should buy?
 
Anotoneher said:
That's what I've been thinking. I have done a repair disk permissions & verify/repair disk. I've been thinking of upgrading to 4gb ram but haven't done it yet.

Anyone recommend ram I should buy?
Click to expand...
To determine if you can benefit from more RAM, launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom to check your page outs. Page outs are cumulative since your last restart, so the best way to check is to restart your computer and track page outs under your normal workload (the apps, browser pages and documents you normally would have open). If your page outs are significant (say 1GB or more) under normal use, you may benefit from more RAM. If your page outs are zero or very low during normal use, you probably won't see any performance improvement from adding RAM.

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor

You can find specs on all Apple products, including maximum RAM:
 
GGJstudios said:
To determine if you can benefit from more RAM, launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom to check your page outs. Page outs are cumulative since your last restart, so the best way to check is to restart your computer and track page outs under your normal workload (the apps, browser pages and documents you normally would have open). If your page outs are significant (say 1GB or more) under normal use, you may benefit from more RAM. If your page outs are zero or very low during normal use, you probably won't see any performance improvement from adding RAM.

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor

You can find specs on all Apple products, including maximum RAM:
Click to expand...

My page outs under normal load is 2.4mb...
 
GGJstudios said:
This may help: Performance Tips For Mac OS X

Some people repair, or recommend repairing permissions for situations where it isn't appropriate. Repairing permissions only addresses very specific issues. It is not a "cure all" or a general performance enhancer, and doesn't need to be done on a regular basis. It also doesn't address permissions problems with your files or 3rd party apps.
Click to expand...

The is not to attempt to cure all issues, its that just like a restart, it can fix some issues without any effort... To me the 5 minutes (literally) that it takes to restart and repair permissions is worth the potential, albeit minimal list of issues that can be resolved.
 
I have an old MacBook 2,1 that I had major lag problems with after the Lion update. With an SSD, it screams even with only 2GB RAM.
 
DJLC said:
I have an old MacBook 2,1 that I had major lag problems with after the Lion update. With an SSD, it screams even with only 2GB RAM.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, can anyone recommend SSD to buy? Not exactly sure which to buy, I checked new egg but I'm an idiot :confused:
 
Anotoneher said:
Current Macbook:

Late 2008 Aluminum, 2ghz intel duo, 2gb ddr3, running 10.7.4

My problem: the laptop constantly lags, beach ball 50% of the time, Safari locks up non-stop, there's a 5-10 second delay after I double click an icon till the window opens... it just runs incredibly slow.

I run Onyx bi-weekly, never go under 60 gigs hard-drive space, I don't have any virus/malware, keep my mac up-to-date... is it just time to replace?
Click to expand...

Another thing I would suggest you do is upgrade the RAM from 2GB to 8GB.. you'll see less beach balls (maybe none) less laggyness and everything will seem faster :).
 
yanksrock100 said:
If you can spare like $50 bucks...go for 8 Gigs of RAM. Really helped the speed!
Click to expand...

Totally agree, getting my 8gb in the mail soon.


To OP- I just bought this model in 2.66 ghz and hope to use it as my primary computer for the next 3 years hopefully.

My ideas: Upgrade to 8gb of RAM. Its gonna be speedier
Get an SSD if you can afford one, or if you dont mind getting rid of the CD drive, put an SSD in there and use it for boot up... Probably get a 128gb or 64 gb, around 60-100$. Maybe larger if you need it.

Or get a 7200 RPM HDD, or a hybrid drive. Both will get you better than stock speeds without the expensive SSD.

Edit: Sure its 2.4 mb and not 2.4gb??

Check out on gogle how to do SMC and PRAM resets, those might clear up some issues.
 
xSPRINTERx said:
I have replaced the Superdrive with an SSD (Crucial M4) and put the ram to 8GB. It now boots and opens apps faster than my 27" iMac. I had about written my macbook off and was looking to buy a new one. Spent £130.00 and this will do me for another few years....
Click to expand...


Can you provide more information about the procedures you followed? Is there a particular online tutorial you followed to accomplish this? WOuld it be any harder to just replace the internal HDD with this SSD and leave the Superdrive?

I have a Late 2009 Macbook that I am very interested in upgrading.
 
thekb said:
Can you provide more information about the procedures you followed? Is there a particular online tutorial you followed to accomplish this? WOuld it be any harder to just replace the internal HDD with this SSD and leave the Superdrive?

I have a Late 2009 Macbook that I am very interested in upgrading.
Click to expand...

All you really need is the ifixit guide... you can simply replace your HDD with an SSD, but the other person is talking about having 2 hard drives and no dvd drive
 
thekb said:
Can you provide more information about the procedures you followed? Is there a particular online tutorial you followed to accomplish this? WOuld it be any harder to just replace the internal HDD with this SSD and leave the Superdrive?

I have a Late 2009 Macbook that I am very interested in upgrading.
Click to expand...

I used this as a guidehttp://mac.appstorm.net/how-to/hardware-how-to/upgrade-your-macbook-with-a-dual-hdssd-setup/

I have the ssd in the super drive bay. I used carbon cloner to copy my files over (did a clean lion install whilst waiting http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0031GNYBW/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00for all the bits to come).
Whilst I had the lid off I put 8gb ram in it.
Parts I used (all off amazon uk)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004FM6ZJ4/ref=oh_details_o01_s01_i00

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Komputerbay-DDR3-SODIMM-1066Mhz-Apple/dp/B0031GNYBW/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1338797293&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT128M4SSD2-128GB-M4-SSD/dp/B004W2JKZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1338797023&sr=1-1
The m4 ssd.

She's fast now.
 
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