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Slooooooooow Macbook

K

kroot

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 15, 2009
8
0
Bought my Macbook almost 3 years ago and it worked brilliantly but recently (after upgrading to Leopard?) I have become painfully familiar with the beach ball. Before it was blazing-fast. Now it always seems about two steps behind my brain. And that's REALLY slow.

I have no idea where to start looking.

Please help!
 
Get more RAM and try out an Archive and Install. Make sure you have a backup of course and any "maintenance" application is going to be a near useless panacea.
 
Eidorian said:
Get more RAM and try out an Archive and Install. Make sure you have a backup of course and any "maintenance" application is going to be useless panacea.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Your 1GB of RAM is probably the root cause.
 
Yeahbut.......Why would the same RAM give me great performance before and then suddenly get slow? I'm running the same programs. Is Leopard the cause?
 
kroot said:
Yeahbut.......Why would the same RAM giving me great performance before and then suddenly get slow? I'm running the same programs. Is Leopard the cause?
Click to expand...

Yes, Leopard requires more RAM than Tiger.
 
On a notebook you're going to hit two bottlenecks. The first being the RAM and the second being the hard drive.

Get more RAM and/or a faster hard drive.
 
Your Macbook should handle Leopard fine with 1 GB. While more RAM would help, you could have a software problem or you could have a hard drive problem.

I agree with an Archive and Install (proper backups, etc.) and if that doesn't help, I'd make sure your hard drive is not bad.
 
How full is your hard drive? Ideally you'd want to have at least half of it free for best performance, but once you get close to filling it then it starts to get slower more quickly.
 
So, what's "Archive and Install"?

Also, my 120GB HD still has 20 GB unused.......
 
Archive and Install puts a copy of the OS into an Old System folder, just in case, and installs a fresh copy, all while preserving your user files.
 
kroot said:
Where do I find this Archive and Install?
Click to expand...
It's in the setup options, alongside other choices such as erase and install, etc. You will need to be booted off of the 10.5 DVD prior to that.

You may also want to consider going back to 10.4. I still use Tiger on one of my older computers as it runs much better than Leopard does.
 
So, I'm beginning to suspect that I paid Apple to degrade my computer's performance. That is, they sold me Leopard knowing full well that it would not run well on an older machine and that I would have to pay them MORE money for a RAM upgrade to make it work as well as it used to with Tiger.

Has Steve Jobs been studying at the Bill Gates School of Business Management?

Jeeeeeeezus!
 
i have a first generation macbook running leopard and it performs perfectly for me. i have 2gb on it now and a 500gb hard drive but i was running it on 512mb and a 60gb hard drive before i upgraded both. maybe the problem lies outside of leopard.
 
vertigo78 said:
i have a first generation macbook running leopard and it performs perfectly for me. i have 2gb on it now and a 500gb hard drive but i was running it on 512mb and a 60gb hard drive before i upgraded both. maybe the problem lies outside of leopard.
Click to expand...

What do you mean "the problem lies outside of leopard"? Of course Leopard will run better after you quadrupled your RAM. That's exactly what we are explaining to the OP. ;) :)
 
So, I'm beginning to suspect that I paid Apple to degrade my computer's performance. That is, they sold me Leopard knowing full well that it would not run well on an older machine and that I would have to pay them MORE money for a RAM upgrade to make it work as well as it used to with Tiger.

Has Steve Jobs been studying at the Bill Gates School of Business Management?
Click to expand...
1. Hey, newer OSes are like newer games - they consume more resources and bring in more bling. If you're satisfied with an older version that works better, use that instead.

2. Don't, under any condition, buy ram from apple, they will charge you terrible amounts. Get two of these and you'll be fine.

Other than that, like most people told you - after a period of 3 years it's not strange for any OS to become slower, especially if you did an upgrade to Leopard instead of a clean installation. Reinstall.
 
Matek said:
1. Hey, newer OSes are like newer games - they consume more resources and bring in more bling. If you're satisfied with an older version that works better, use that instead.

2. Don't, under any condition, buy ram from apple, they will charge you terrible amounts. Get two of these and you'll be fine.

Other than that, like most people told you - after a period of 3 years it's not strange for any OS to become slower, especially if you did an upgrade to Leopard instead of a clean installation. Reinstall.
Click to expand...

Wow that's really cheap for a 1gb ram.

this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148234 will work right?

I have a M-'07 Macbook, and i heard the max ram is 3gb? should i get two of those? or just use one? I want mine maxed.
 
What I would do is get at least another 1GB of RAM and a 7200rpm drive. Then backup my current data and do a clean reinstall of Leopard on that drive and then put your data back. You will see a dramatic performance increase.

I often take apart and fix Macbooks. Recently, I had 2 black 2.16GHz machines. I loaded one of them with 2GB of RAM and 7200rpm drive, the other had 1GB and 5400rpm drive. Very noticeable difference in speed between the two which were otherwise identical.
 
I have a M-'07 Macbook, and i heard the max ram is 3gb? should i get two of those? or just use one? I want mine maxed.
Click to expand...
The absolute maximum is 3.3 GB, additionally you need to know that by using 2 same RAM sticks, you get some additional performance because of dual channel.

If you're looking to save money, get 1+2 GB, you won't have dual channel, but the difference is really minimal. On the other hand - you can go with 2+2 GB, since it's only 10 bucks and you will know it's maxed out.
 
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