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Those who initially had a Lion 2011 MBP too slow..

Y

yly3

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 9, 2011
345
4
..how did you fix it ?

I have an Early 2011 15" 2.2 i7 with 6750M 1GB and 8gigs of ram and since I bought it, it's slow. It's bearable but I hate having a 2000$ 2011 machine feeling like a 2007 MacBook. I get beach balls almost everywhere, weather it's light browsing in Safari to opening Logic or iPhoto. It lags lags and I knew I'd hate it the moment I saw Lion on it.. Especially when I try browsing through iPhoto.

It takes sometimes even 10 seconds to wake from sleep, while on Windows 7 it's SSD like, just a couple of seconds lol.

I thought 10.7.2 would fix it, it didn't. 10.7.3 isn't looking anywhere close and it's been 4 months already. Enough is enough.

My 2010 base 11 Air was faster than this and don't tell me the SSD bollocks. On every YouTube comparison video, even the base 15 MBP was like 0.5-1 second at most "slower" than the Air when operating and opening stuff.

I tried the SMC reset but it didn't help.
I know the most logical solution would be reinstalling the OS. But I already have lots of stuff on my laptop and I don't have anything external to back-up 500GB for now, I also have Bootcamp installed.
I also read here that some tried reinstalling but it didn't help.

Basically what can I do, besides reinstalling, to get this fixed ?

Thanks
 
This may be a dumb question, but I figured I'd at least check...

Have you tried verifying/repairing disk permissions during an Option+Startup? Based on what you've said, this sounds like a *possible* contributing factor.
 
If it mainly lags opening Logic or iPhoto. Have you got a project opening on launch or a large library of photos?

I went from a 2011 13" MacBook Air to a 2011 17" MBP and it feels a fair bit slower in general use minus the SSD. I have Win7 on boot camp and it doesn't take any less time waking from sleep than OSX, my guess is your OSX install is borked.
 
yly3 said:
..how did you fix it ?

I have an Early 2011 15" 2.2 i7 with 6750M 1GB and 8gigs of ram and since I bought it, it's slow. It's bearable but I hate having a 2000$ 2011 machine feeling like a 2007 MacBook. I get beach balls almost everywhere, weather it's light browsing in Safari to opening Logic or iPhoto. It lags lags and I knew I'd hate it the moment I saw Lion on it.. Especially when I try browsing through iPhoto.

It takes sometimes even 10 seconds to wake from sleep, while on Windows 7 it's SSD like, just a couple of seconds lol.

I thought 10.7.2 would fix it, it didn't. 10.7.3 isn't looking anywhere close and it's been 4 months already. Enough is enough.

My 2010 base 11 Air was faster than this and don't tell me the SSD bollocks. On every YouTube comparison video, even the base 15 MBP was like 0.5-1 second at most "slower" than the Air when operating and opening stuff.

I tried the SMC reset but it didn't help.
I know the most logical solution would be reinstalling the OS. But I already have lots of stuff on my laptop and I don't have anything external to back-up 500GB for now, I also have Bootcamp installed.
I also read here that some tried reinstalling but it didn't help.

Basically what can I do, besides reinstalling, to get this fixed ?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I have the exact same MacBook Pro with same graphics and amount of RAM as you. Only difference is an Apple installed SSD option on mine. I am also running Lion 10.7.2 with no persistent beach balls or lag and wakes within 2 seconds from sleep as you found with your windows 7 install. Something is either definitely up with your 10.7.2 install or perhaps the SSD really does makes a difference with Lion.
 
Thanks ! Haven't thought about that. Just hit it and holy cow there are like 25 permission errors and still checking. Will get back on you asap.
 
yly3 said:
Thanks ! Haven't thought about that. Just hit it and holy cow there are like 25 permission errors and still checking. Will get back on you asap.
Click to expand...

I'm interested to know if this helps the problem. When I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion my MBP absolutely CRAWLED. It was awful. I repaired several hundred permissions problems and it started running like bowels at a chili fest.

I was kinda disappointed Apple didn't build a repair into the Lion install to begin with.
 
Finished repairing. Restarted. Will leave it on sleep for 20 minutes while I have some lunch and will test it throughout. For now it seems a tiny faster, but this could be due the restart.

Will keep updated.
 
As much as I love SSDs, I find them overrated.

And hell no, I won't spend be spending 1000$ on 512GB (and I need 750 at least anyway) when I have a quad-core i7 with 8 gigs of ram.
A couple of years ago people didn't "excuse" a machine's slowness because of the lack of SSD, they simply expected it to work flawlessly.
I agree SSDs significally improve speed (and can do miracles to old 2008 C2D computers), but that should be considered an ultimate premium or the cherry of the top when you already have a damn fast machine.


On-topic : the machine is now indeed fast ! I opened lots of apps and it still felt like it could easily take more. 6 tabs in Safari and there was no delay closing them like it used to. The biggest test was in Spotlight, when up until now, it took 2-3 seconds to even show something, while now it is instant, in real time like it should be.

I finally feel like having a Mac again.

Thanks a lot !

Btw, are there any other tips of cleaning (to not be read as cleaning malware on Windows) and make it even faster ? :)
 
yly3 said:
As much as I love SSDs, I find them overrated.

And hell no, I won't spend be spending 1000$ on 512GB (and I need 750 at least anyway) when I have a quad-core i7 with 8 gigs of ram.
A couple of years ago people didn't "excuse" a machine's slowness because of the lack of SSD, they simply expected it to work flawlessly.
I agree SSDs significally improve speed (and can do miracles to old 2008 C2D computers), but that should be considered an ultimate premium or the cherry of the top when you already have a damn fast machine.


On-topic : the machine is now indeed fast ! I opened lots of apps and it still felt like it could easily take more. 6 tabs in Safari and there was no delay closing them like it used to. The biggest test was in Spotlight, when up until now, it took 2-3 seconds to even show something, while now it is instant, in real time like it should be.

I finally feel like having a Mac again.

Thanks a lot !

Btw, are there any other tips of cleaning (to not be read as cleaning malware on Windows) and make it even faster ? :)
Click to expand...

I am glad you were able to fix your problem with 10.7.2. Yes I agree, SSD is the icing on the cake. :)
 
My only complaints left are that scrolling in Safari is still pretty choppy and right now I only have this thread in 1 tab. Sometimes it is smooth, sometimes it is laggy. It's a 50-50 scenario.

And waking from sleep is still taking too much.
 
yly3 said:
My only complaints left are that scrolling in Safari is still pretty choppy and right now I only have this thread in 1 tab. Sometimes it is smooth, sometimes it is laggy. It's a 50-50 scenario.

And waking from sleep is still taking too much.
Click to expand...

Waking from sleep is bound by your HDD and will only improve if you replace it with a faster one (SSD).

I find safari to be a mess in general and hence I use Chrome. I have no issues with scrolling or anything like that, even with a slower machine than yours.
 
It was my low battery at 3%, right after I posted everything started to be choppy. Now 80% of the cases it is iPhone-like smooth, only with really heavy pages it struggles a bit.

About the wake times I think it shouldn't be longer than 6 seconds. In Windows 7 it is Instant On.
 
yly3 said:
On-topic : the machine is now indeed fast ! I opened lots of apps and it still felt like it could easily take more. 6 tabs in Safari and there was no delay closing them like it used to. The biggest test was in Spotlight, when up until now, it took 2-3 seconds to even show something, while now it is instant, in real time like it should be.

I finally feel like having a Mac again.

Thanks a lot !
Click to expand...

borat_great_success.jpg


Anytime, glad to hear! I learned the Disk Permissions trick the hard way ...I spent a good month with ChoppyLion until this dawned on me one day.
 
yly3 said:
My only complaints left are that scrolling in Safari is still pretty choppy and right now I only have this thread in 1 tab. Sometimes it is smooth, sometimes it is laggy. It's a 50-50 scenario.

And waking from sleep is still taking too much.
Click to expand...

You can disable the sleepimage. I forgot how, ask google. That should speed up the wakeup from sleep.

I don't know why Safari is choppy. Did you try to completely clean it out, i.e. delete all caches, cookies, history?
 
thundersteele said:
You can disable the sleepimage. I forgot how, ask google. That should speed up the wakeup from sleep.

I don't know why Safari is choppy. Did you try to completely clean it out, i.e. delete all caches, cookies, history?
Click to expand...

I replied above. It was my low battery

@Senex: Better late than never. Too bad it took me 4 painful months lulz.
 
yly3 said:
Btw, are there any other tips of cleaning (to not be read as cleaning malware on Windows) and make it even faster ? :)
Click to expand...
You really don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space. It will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software.

Performance tips for Mac OS X
 
Yes, and thank you, and I am aware that OSX doesn't need too much attention when it comes to maintenance, at least comparing to W7.
I was asking mainly related to my ex-problem. Maybe there were other tips besides the Disk Repair.
 
Unfortunately I need to bump this thread.. It only lasted this long. I can't check for disk repair right now but even if it was the same problem I wouldn't like to do the same thing every couple of weeks...

Any other tips guys ? :(

I haven't installed anything new

EDIT: I used Disk Utility Check again and no errors appeared this time..
 
Last edited:
yly3 said:
As much as I love SSDs, I find them overrated.

And hell no, I won't spend be spending 1000$ on 512GB (and I need 750 at least anyway) when I have a quad-core i7 with 8 gigs of ram.
Click to expand...

If you need 750GB and want faster, but not willing to pay the $$ for SSD, you might consider the new Seagate 750GB Momentus Hybrid (OWC sells for around $250). It has 8GB of SSD "smart cache" on board. I have the 500BG version (with 4GB SSD) in my Macbook and love it! My MBP boot time was more than cut in half and most of the common APS I use now open instantly. I paid $114 for mine, but now even the 500GB version is up to $179 at OWC due I think to the floods in Thailand. Still a lot cheaper than full-SSD with really noticable increase in performance over the stock HD.
 
SSDs are the current panacea for Mac users who love to throw money at their Macs so they can boot their computers 30 seconds faster than when they had a standard drive.

My early 2011 13" MBP simply flies with an inexpensive 8GB RAM upgrade. One reason may be that for the first time in years I did not use Migration Assistant. I only installed the apps that I really use and left the dross I had accumulated on my other Mac behind. I may never use MA again when moving to a new Mac.
 
@BasilFawlty Interesting. I stumbled online upon those hybrids but never thought it could make a significant difference (of course in this price range).
Could you provide a more throughout review of it ? Do apps open faster ? Is system overall a bit snappier ? Searching through folders etc.
I don't expect full-on SSD speed but if for that price the difference can be felt a bit, I might upgrade.


Right now, I finally bit the bullet and I am going to clean-reinstall Lion. My 150GB external HDD is enough to store my most important files, iPhoto Library, iTunes library and some software. This better work ..

I read online that some machines like mine actually had a faulty HDD and some of them (few) got them replaced at Apple Stores. I'm sure it's not a widespread issue but it can be taken into account I suppose.
 
yly3 said:
As much as I love SSDs, I find them overrated.

A couple of years ago people didn't "excuse" a machine's slowness because of the lack of SSD, they simply expected it to work flawlessly.
Click to expand...

Well, a few years ago tighter code was written and the OS's weren't as bloated as it is now. The only way to offset this it to get faster hardware.

One day soon, SSD's won't just be a luxury.
 
I finished reinstalling Lion with Lion Recovery Partition and .. NOTHING CHANGED :confused::confused::confused:

After wasting 3 hours to download and install, I was getting ready to insert again all the personal info like to a brand new Mac but I'm prompted with my own log-in screen WTF. I know I am a bit of a beginner, I have shy of 1 year with OSX but what did I do wrong ?

I entered the Lion Recovery Partition, chose to Install OS X Lion, clicked on Macintosh HD and the Lion download started.
BTW, they really needed to provide a physical copy of the OS. Now I have to re-download all over again ..

My only change is that on top-right corner, next to Spotlight I have my username and that is all.


EDIT:

It seems I first need to access Disk Utily and erase my hard drive and only then install Lion. Pff.. If I recall correctly SL wasn't like this.
 
Last edited:
UPDATE !

Long Story short,reinstalling Lion didn't change a thing. I managed to get Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on the machine and it seems that not the OS is the issue. Snow Leopard IS better than Lion when it comes to battery life and overall stability but there some very strange simptons like delaying in just selecting a song to play in iTunes. Delay in closing Finder windows and so on.

1) I used Smart Utility and said HDD is okay, 0 bad sectors.
2) Are there any other ways is testing to see if there are other possible hardware issues besides HDD failure ?

I thought about it and I think I want to be done with it and just buy a 256GB SSD. Issues and issues is what kept me away from buying SSD, besides the price.
I put my eyes on an Samsung Series 830. It's just that I trust Samsung more because they are making their own drives and 830 seems to be fixing the compatibility issues which appeard throughout last year.

However, I stumbled on this thread
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1303929/
and it's making me nervous. I don't know what should I do..
I also have the Corsair 2x4 Ram kit upgrade in my laptop.

Will my laptop be able to read full SATA3 if it replaces the HDD bay, not the optical bay ?
Vendor: Intel
Product: 6 Series Chipset
Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
 
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