Need to refresh my Macbook. Reinstall or do maintenance

[Arkanius]

Despite everyone saying that Mac OS requires no maintenance, I think that's a lie.

My Macbook (2007) has been degrading it's performance slowly, despite it's RAM upgrade I got it 2 years ago. Every program beachballs quickly and even Finder gets slow as molasses.
I've checked the HDD status and it's ok, the RAM is also working correctly.

So basically, I'm between a format and OSX reinstall or some other maintenance tips I do not know about.

Does anyone have any tips before I resort to the destroy to create again?

 

[justperry]

Despite everyone saying that Mac OS requires no maintenance, I think that's a lie.

My Macbook (2007) has been degrading it's performance slowly, despite it's RAM upgrade I got it 2 years ago. Every program beachballs quickly and even Finder gets slow as molasses.
I've checked the HDD status and it's ok, the RAM is also working correctly.

So basically, I'm between a format and OSX reinstall or some other maintenance tips I do not know about.

Does anyone have any tips before I resort to the destroy to create again?

Nice start for a newbie, a lie, I started from 10.0 all the way up to 10.5.8, always upgraded and it does not get slower.
You probably upgraded to 10.8.2 which your machine is less capable of running but it won't get slower and slower.

How many processes do you have running, there might be many more than you think if you don't select all processes in Activity Monitor.
Newer software needs more resources, keep that in your mind.

Also, if you want it to run faster get a SSD.
How many pageouts do you get, if you get heaps you are running out of memory.

 

[Arkanius]

Nice start for a newbie, a lie, I started from 10.0 all the way up to 10.5.8, always upgraded and it does not get slower.
You probably upgraded to 10.8.2 which your machine is less capable of running but it won't get slower and slower.

How many processes do you have running, there might be many more than you think if you don't select all processes in Activity Monitor.
Newer software needs more resources, keep that in your mind.

Also, if you want it to run faster get a SSD.
How many pageouts do you get, if you get heaps you are running out of memory.

Not really a lie.
Mind you though, my Macbook started on Leopard!
Its a Blackbook from 2007 (Last model)

There aren't many processes. The most tasking one right now is Finder.

As of right now:
VM Size: 206.18 GB
Page Ins: 23.39GB (0 bytes/sec)
Page outs: 331.1 MB (0 bytes/sec)

I'm newbie because I was a lurker

EDIT:

Running Onyx right now to run some maintenance scripts

 

[justperry]

Not really a lie.
Mind you though, my Macbook started on Leopard!
Its a Blackbook from 2007 (Last model)

There aren't many processes. The most tasking one right now is Finder.

As of right now:
VM Size: 206.18 GB
Page Ins: 23.39GB (0 bytes/sec)
Page outs: 331.1 MB (0 bytes/sec)

I'm newbie because I was a lurker

So, you are on Lion or Mountain Lion, they seem to suck on older hardware and are full of bugs.

I was just joking about the newbie, that's why I used the

And below are mine on a Powerbook G4 1.67 10.5.8, seems to be a lot lower and I have about 250.000 PageOuts, on 1 GB RAM ( second slot does not work)

 

[Arkanius]

So, you are on Lion or Mountain Lion, they seem to suck on older hardware and are full of bugs.

I was just joking about the newbie, that's why I used the

And below are mine on a Powerbook G4 1.67 10.5.8, seems to be a lot lower and I have about 250.000 PageOuts, on 1 GB RAM ( second slot does not work)

I'm on Lion.
Mountain Lion won't even run on my Macbook.

Those values look normal for a 1GB computer. Mine looks excessive.

 

[justperry]

I'm on Lion.
Mountain Lion won't even run on my Macbook.

Those values look normal for a 1GB computer. Mine looks excessive.

As of right now:
VM Size: 206.18 GB
Page Ins: 23.39GB (0 bytes/sec)
Page outs: 331.1 MB (0 bytes/sec)

Your Page ins/outs are not excessive but your VM is huge compared to mine.
If your machine is on for a long time your Page Ins will grow and grow, nothing to worry about, it's just reads from disk.

But the VM size, why is this so big????
This could be completely normal but it might not.
I understand most of it except why VM Size is so much bigger than RSize.

Oh, and Lion seems to be buggy like hell, if I had a machine like you I would stay on SL, except if you really need Lion or M.L.

 

[Arkanius]

Your Page ins/outs are not excessive but your VM is huge compared to mine.
If your machine is on for a long time your Page Ins will grow and grow, nothing to worry about, it's just reads from disk.

But the VM size, why is this so big????
This could be completely normal but it might not.
I understand most of it except why VM Size is so much bigger than RSize.

Oh, and Lion seems to be buggy like hell, if I had a machine like you I would stay on SL, except if you really need Lion or M.L.

I'm thinking of returning to Snow Leopard.
It was the most stable OS ever for me.

Lion never convinced me

 

[SanJacinto]

Cool, still using a Blackbook is great. I hope your machine will run for some more years.

Make a TM Backup or like I do: Save your itunes library, iphoto, downloads, documents and other folders you use for your stuff and than make full format (c: ) and do a clean install.
By this you will get a really clean system.

If you don't need Safari 6 or iCloud I suggest to go for Snow Leopard. It's great.

 

[Arkanius]

Cool, still using a Blackbook is great. I hope your machine will run for some more years.

Make a TM Backup or like I do: Save your itunes library, iphoto, downloads, documents and other folders you use for your stuff and than make full format (c: ) and do a clean install.
By this you will get a really clean system.

If you don't need Safari 6 or iCloud I suggest to go for Snow Leopard. It's great.

It's the most solid laptop I ever had. It's a fantastic system, which only fault is it's ****** integrated vídeo card.