macbook performance

[dwd3885]

so i just bought a late 2006 black macbook

core 2 duo 2ghz
1gig ram
120gb hard drive
intel gma

I installed Leopard on it and it improved performance for me. But I still am feeling a little sluggish when I'm trying to do more than a few things.

I'll be importing photos in iphoto, have mail open, safari, itunes open usually. maybe another program-haven't installed CS3 Design Premium yet. And i experience a little sluggish performance (not at all what it was like in the MBP-that worked great,,,until i sold it!) That MBP had 1.5gigs ram and the dedicated graphics.

So I'm wondering if this sluggish performance/lag is due to the 1gig ram or the integrated graphics. I don't really have the money to upgrade to the latest edition macbook with x3100 graphics or even the MBP (1499 refurb now-great deal, but can't do it now) but i do have enough money to possibly upgrade the ram to 2gigs if that will fix this issue totally.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Vader]

Not sure how much it will speed your computer up, but I would surely recommend having 2 gb of ram. 512mb is the minimum you need to run leopard, and more is recommended. Any time you are running more than one or two apps (safari can use a lot of ram) you may want more than 1gb to keep everything snappy.

 

[CarlsonCustoms]

Up your ram and then report the progress, should help quite a bit.

 

[siurpeeman]

i owned a nov 2006 macbook and found the performance to be a little sluggish, which was largely resolved by the addition of more ram. definitely give it a shot.

 

[Killyp]

Agreed, more RAM (at least 1.5 gigs) and try to keep anywhere between 10-15 gb free space on the HDD, that'll speed things up a lot...

 

[dwd3885]

Agreed, more RAM (at least 1.5 gigs) and try to keep anywhere between 10-15 gb free space on the HDD, that'll speed things up a lot...

Yea I think I might just buy either a gig and go with 1.5. If I need more, I can always buy a 2gig stick when prices go down if they do, so I can max my RAM.

So the integrated graphics isn't the killer here? Obviously more RAM for integrated graphics makes sense, since the graphics is shared. But I don't game at all, so seems like integrated graphics isn't a big deal.