Switching users takes forever on 17in early 2011

[KevinRightWing]

I have not made any upgrades to my 17in early 2011 mbp yet, although I have asked questions about it on these boards in the past and people are always super helpful. I am getting closer to spending some money and I am just curious about one of my main slowdown issues:

My wife and I share the laptop which is hooked up to a 27in Thunderbolt display. Switching between users takes forever (being a little dramatic, but about 2 min to switch over) and then it lags for a good 2 to 3 min. After that 2 to 3 min, everything seems to operate at a normal speed.

Would my 5400 rpm stock hard drive be the prime bottleneck, or my stock 4gb of ram?

Thanks again to the macrumors community.

 

[yjchua95]

I have not made any upgrades to my 17in early 2011 mbp yet, although I have asked questions about it on these boards in the past and people are always super helpful. I am getting closer to spending some money and I am just curious about one of my main slowdown issues:

My wife and I share the laptop which is hooked up to a 27in Thunderbolt display. Switching between users takes forever (being a little dramatic, but about 2 min to switch over) and then it lags for a good 2 to 3 min. After that 2 to 3 min, everything seems to operate at a normal speed.

Would my 5400 rpm stock hard drive be the prime bottleneck, or my stock 4gb of ram?

Thanks again to the macrumors community.

The 5400rpm drive is the main bottleneck.

Depending on what you do, 4GB of RAM is pushing it these days.

You could buy an SSD for it, but if I were you, I wouldn't do that. I'd sell it off as fast as I can and buy a new rMBP instead. The early/late-2011 MBPs suffer from the Radeongate manufacturing flaw.

 

[glenthompson]

I have not made any upgrades to my 17in early 2011 mbp yet, although I have asked questions about it on these boards in the past and people are always super helpful. I am getting closer to spending some money and I am just curious about one of my main slowdown issues:

My wife and I share the laptop which is hooked up to a 27in Thunderbolt display. Switching between users takes forever (being a little dramatic, but about 2 min to switch over) and then it lags for a good 2 to 3 min. After that 2 to 3 min, everything seems to operate at a normal speed.

Would my 5400 rpm stock hard drive be the prime bottleneck, or my stock 4gb of ram?

Thanks again to the macrumors community.

Do you logoff then back on or use fast user switching? The HDD is probably the bottleneck but Activity Monitor will tell you if memory is an issue too.