Is There A Compelling Reason to Upgrade to 10.9?

[Mr. Retrofire]

...I should of timed my old start up time to compare to my new start up time but I did not. The MacOS still takes quite a while to start up compared to Windows.

AFAIK, 10.9.x requires a few days before it has a “normal” startup time.

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As I said before, I have 3 external hard drives hooked to my 2011 MBP for a total of 8 partitions. I have no idea what impact this has on the OS.

None, if you disable spotlight for those partitions, and if you have enough RAM (for the OS X file read/write caches).

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

It's looks like this model, 2011, 15", 2.2 Ghz intel Core i7 (model:MacBookPro8,2) can have memory added to it. I'll have to check it and see if there is access for RAM upgrades. If possible, but not 100% confirmed, I think this would correct the SBB issue. I'm not sure if this is a unibody model, but does that have an impact on RAM upgrades? Thanks!

Yes, 16 GB RAM means around 80-90 percent less beach balls, compared to 8 GB, at least in my case (my Early-2011 17" MBP has the same i7 2.2 GHz Sandy Bridge Quad-Core processor). I use RAM from known semiconductor manufacturers (for example Micron --> brand name “Crucial”, Samsung, Elpida, Hynix (Apple uses Hynix), ...). I recommend a good screwdriver.