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To upgrade my MBP13 2011 i5 just because of Lion?

V

V4705

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 23, 2009
438
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I'm using my laptop at work (I prefer to work on a mac laptop than windows desktop), so sometimes I need a little bit me "juice" than regular use (few browsers together, photoshop, few IM apps, music and such).
With SL everything worked okay (not great but ok), with Lion I do experience annoying performances that sadly made me use the Windows desktop.

My specs are: MBP 13" 2011, i5 stock (4gb, regular sata drive).

I don't want to downgrade to an older OS, but I still want to work on this machine.

A. When do you think will be the next MBP upgrade?
B. If not soon, what do you think I must upgrade to get (at least) the performances I'm used to from SL ?

Ram - right now how many free slots I have ?
Hdd - theres something better than OWC 120GB Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G ? is it support all the features Apple's stock SSD support? (TRIM and such?).
Cpu - do you think it's smart to upgrade other components while using the current CPU or it will be better to just sell this machine and get 13" i7 ? (I don't want to carry more than 13" on me, every day).



Thanks!
 
You don't have any free RAM slots, but you can replace what you have with 8GB, which may help. check out your RAM usage in Activity monitor to see if you need more.
 
RAM is pretty cheap and I think you should go about doing that first and see if you get any noticeable upgrade in speed. You can get 8GB for under 60 bucks now if you know where to look.

However, if you do go with a new machine, I would suggest selling the one you have to make up for the money... either that or donate it to a broke college student ;) <- Me.

Seriously though, try upgrading the RAM. Even if it doesn't give you the performance gains you want, it will go the extra bit if/when you sell it.
 
OWC selling for 77$ (4gb x2), there is any reason to pay more for them?
 
V4705 said:
OWC selling for 77$ (4gb x2), there is any reason to pay more for them?
Click to expand...

Nope, but plenty of reason to pay less. crucial.com was around $60 a few weeks back, newegg had a GSkill sale for $45-$50...
 
I would definitely upgrade the RAM as suggested. I'm currently running Lion on the same machine as yours (2.3 GHz Core i5, 4GB RAM), and it doesn't have any trouble. However, it does lag a bit when I have a lot of programs open at once. A ram upgrade should fix it.
 
Did you upgrade from SL or did you do a clean install of Lion? I did a clean install and run photshop, illustrator, indesign, itunes, chrome, evernote, and sparrow together and did not seem to notice any performance hit. A friend who upgraded from SL to Lion had some issues too but after doing a clean install, the performance hit was not as bad. Its worth a shot.
 
Thanks,
The most annoying thing for me right now is working with Microsoft Office on Lion. it is MUCH slower than on SL, I'm not sure if its the OS, hardware usage or just the software...
 
d0ster said:
Did you upgrade from SL or did you do a clean install of Lion? I did a clean install and run photshop, illustrator, indesign, itunes, chrome, evernote, and sparrow together and did not seem to notice any performance hit. A friend who upgraded from SL to Lion had some issues too but after doing a clean install, the performance hit was not as bad. Its worth a shot.
Click to expand...

I actually did upgrade but I forgot to backup the installation image file before the update and now I don't have the "Lion Installer" app anymore... Do you have any idea how to get the image now?

Thanks.
 
V4705 said:
Thanks,
The most annoying thing for me right now is working with Microsoft Office on Lion. it is MUCH slower than on SL, I'm not sure if its the OS, hardware usage or just the software...
Click to expand...

Does that seem to be the only slower program on Lion or are you having slower performance across the board? They might have just gotten lazy when writing whatever they had to write to make it compatible and, as a result, people just get slower performance from it.
 
Everything is a little slower for me on Lion, Photoshop, Multitasking (just regular apps when they're running at the same time) and such.

MS Office is the biggest difference for me right now, I don't remember suffering like that on SL.
 
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Seems to me that Office is faster on lion
 
V4705 said:
I actually did upgrade but I forgot to backup the installation image file before the update and now I don't have the "Lion Installer" app anymore... Do you have any idea how to get the image now?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yea, go to the App store, hover over the "Installed" link in Lion, hold Option and click it. I think that allows you to re-download it. read it in an article somewhere. People do that then burn the installer to a disk so they'll always have it: I suggest doing that if you plan on booting Lion in the future.

V4705 said:
Everything is a little slower for me on Lion, Photoshop, Multitasking (just regular apps when they're running at the same time) and such.

MS Office is the biggest difference for me right now, I don't remember suffering like that on SL.
Click to expand...

A lot of people are reporting slower systems and/or problems when upgrading to Lion on top of their machine rather than doing a clean install. I thought about going to Lion but already migrated everything from my SL machine onto a new SL machine when I got it.

All in all, i'm just going to stay here for a while. I get the speed and none of that extra stuff that's bogging people down. Oh and if you have it set for the scroll bars to appear and disappear when you are/aren't scrolling, that uses up a lot of CPU. Try disabling that and you should see improvement.
 
Young Spade said:
Yea, go to the App store, hover over the "Installed" link in Lion, hold Option and click it. I think that allows you to re-download it.
Click to expand...

Okay I found how to do that. Its Option key and than pressing the "Purchased" tab.

Thanks!
 
There are no compatibility issues? any ddr3 so-dimm 1333 will work?
 
V4705 said:
I'm using my laptop at work (I prefer to work on a mac laptop than windows desktop), so sometimes I need a little bit me "juice" than regular use (few browsers together, photoshop, few IM apps, music and such).
With SL everything worked okay (not great but ok), with Lion I do experience annoying performances that sadly made me use the Windows desktop.

My specs are: MBP 13" 2011, i5 stock (4gb, regular sata drive).

I don't want to downgrade to an older OS, but I still want to work on this machine.
Click to expand...

Before upgrading anything, try resetting the SMC and see if that rectifies performance issues.

V4705 said:
A. When do you think will be the next MBP upgrade?
Click to expand...
Either late 2011 (Nov-Dec) or early 2012 (Jan-Mar).

V4705 said:
B. If not soon, what do you think I must upgrade to get (at least) the performances I'm used to from SL ?
Click to expand...
Definitely upgrade HDD to SSD (if you have the money to do so). Upgrading RAM (from 4gb to 8gb) would be a good idea as well, since, from what I can tell, you run a fair amount of tasks simultaneously.

V4705 said:
Ram - right now how many free slots I have ?
Click to expand...

You have two RAM slots total. Currently, they each hold a 2gb RAM stick. When, and if, you decide to upgrade to 8gb RAM, you'll need to get 2x 4gb RAM kit.

V4705 said:
Hdd - theres something better than OWC 120GB Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G ? is it support all the features Apple's stock SSD support? (TRIM and such?).
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, TRIM is not [officially] supported on 3rd party SSDs. i don't think it matters much though, since most modern SSDs have garbage collection built into the controller. Anyway, I'd recommend getting a SATA II SSD, for better compatibility and stability. Samsung 470 is a good candidate to try out.

V4705 said:
Cpu - do you think it's smart to upgrade other components while using the current CPU or it will be better to just sell this machine and get 13" i7 ? (I don't want to carry more than 13" on me, every day).
Click to expand...
If you upgrade to an SSD, you'll see immense speed improvement - regardless of CPU. The Airs have weaker CPUs than the Pros, and yet they're still faster in most everyday tasks.
 
Thanks,
What is the best software to check the new sticks are ok ?
Can I use Memtest86+ for PC, or there's something better for Mac ?
 
V4705 said:
Thanks,
What is the best software to check the new sticks are ok ?
Can I use Memtest86+ for PC, or there's something better for Mac ?
Click to expand...

If your system boot successfully, if you aren't experiencing kernel panics and/or increased beach-balling activity, it is safe to say that the new RAM works fine.
 
V4705 said:
Thanks,
The most annoying thing for me right now is working with Microsoft Office on Lion. it is MUCH slower than on SL, I'm not sure if its the OS, hardware usage or just the software...
Click to expand...

That's more microsofts fault than Apples. I honestly don't think you NEED to upgrade. Just tweak what you have a little and wait for MS to update office to run on lion better
 
I'm looking at RAM but I can run my stock MBP 13" pretty hard....
 

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Thanks everybody,
Crucial M4 128gb, g-skill 8gb and clean installation of lion = Fell like a whole different computer.
 
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