Keeping my macbook working at optimal performance!

[cap2587]

I recently purchased a macbook and I am wanting to know how to keep it at Optimal Performance. If a mac was running slow what would be the steps to increase performance again. I read a good article regarding this topic.

http://www.chriswrites.com/2009/04/17-reasons-why-your-mac-is-so-unbelievably-slow/

Are these all good steps to follow. Does anyone agree strongly with some of these suggestions or have other good one's to add.

I am a PC guy and know alot of the good programs to use to speed up a PC. Is there a disk cleanup tool, do macs need defragging etc.

Is OnyX 2.2 a good program to use. Is the preference folder like to prefetch or temp files folder in windows and is it fine to delete everything in this folder. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[S.B.G]

Yes all those are good tips on the page. Most are for extreme cases though and if you have plenty of RAM, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I was a PC guy too before and am still an IT administrator for Windows. Mac's do not need defragging. The Unix based OS/X does a fantastic job of file allocation and doesn't spread them all over the disk like Windows does.

Onyx is a great program to use if you do have any trouble. You do not want to delete anything in the preference folder unless you're having a specific problem with an application and you trace the error to it's preference file. You can liken the preference folder to Windows registry, but it's really not the same thing. The preference folder is just what it is called, preferences. It's where all your preferences are stored for the OS and applications. You shouldn't ever really need to mess around in there.

Short of you loading the MacBook up with tons of software or doing something you shouldn't have, your MacBook will run great for a long time. I'm still using an early 2007 MacBook Pro and it hums along wonderfully.

 

[rdstoll]

I was going to ask the same question. I have a MacBook that I got last year....2.4 Ghz Core 2 Due with 4GB of RAM and a 260GB hard drive, of which we are only using 45GB.

This machine has started to run painfully slow at times and being an old PC guy I had a checklist of things to do to try to diagnose the problem and clean it up, if possible. But I'm not sure what to do on a MacBook to try to diagnose what the problem might be. We don't have a lot of programs opening up at boot and other than a somewhat cluttered desktop there isn't much else going on here from what I can gather.

I've run the Disk Utility to verify the hard drive and it came back okay.

Does anyone have other suggestions of things to look for or tests to run on the system to make sure there aren't conflicts somewhere causing the slowdown?

 

[zeldafan4ev]

I don't really know how to fix a computer that's already slow (Maybe disc cleanup?) But to keep a macbook nice, it's really just about maintaining what you have on it. Every few months I go through and delete stuff I don't need, you'd be surprised how many documents you make you don't need and forget about, how much stuff you download that is still there, and random programs you've only used once.

On my PC I filled it up all the way to the point where it did some damage, so on my 250g macbook, i usually never go past 150G available.
(i keep all my itunes on it, text documents, presentations, and world of warcraft lol)
I just wouldn't push it to the limits, be a little wary about how much your doing.

 

[mojorisin77]

here's a good article...

http://www.macworld.com/article/156418/2010/12/speedier_mac.html?lsrc=nl_newtomac_h_crawl

 

[SmokeyRobinson]

http://www.macworld.com/article/156418/2010/12/speedier_mac.html?lsrc=nl_newtomac_h_crawl

Delete files on your desktop?
Buy more RAM?
Buy a faster drive?


lol... good article

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

On my PC I filled it up all the way to the point where it did some damage, so on my 250g macbook, i usually never go past 150G available.

While you're on the right track, this is a bit extreme. As long as you leave about 10% of your HDD available, you'll be fine. And, really, all you need is about 10 GB available... the machine uses it for swap space which is why your computer slows down if you go smaller than that. The 10% rule works well for the most common sizes (160 GB - 320 GB) but on larger sizes (500 GB - 2 TB) it leaves ridiculous amounts of space open. OS X doesn't need 200 GB of free space for swap on a 2 TB drive.