To upgrade my MBP13 2011 i5 just because of Lion?

I have the same MBP as you. Under SL, I was very happy with performance, even when constantly running a Win7 VM in Parallels. I have had to upgrade my RAM to 8GB to get the same level of performance under Lion.

Right now, my activity monitor shows 7.7GB in use, so my MBP is certainly making use of the extra.
 
Clean Install...

Hello everybody,

I'm going to piggyback on this topic as it relates to my question. I have the same computer mentioned and I have already upgraded my ram to 8gb. I'm the computer felt faster after I upgraded, but I still experience things like long boot times, etc. For a little background, I first had a 2010 mbp, sold it and purchased the 2011 model. I migrated EVERYTHING from time machine backup onto the new machine. It ran just as good as before if not better. Recently I've upgraded to snow leopard and it's running ok but I think it could be better. My plan is to upgrade the hard drive to something slightly larger than the standard 320 @ 5400 rpm. I would like to replace it with something around 500 gigs @ 7200 rpm. Has anyone had experience with putting a 7200 in one of these machines? Performance gains? noise? vibration? compatibility? I would love to know some thoughts before spending my hard earned cash. And of course after all that, I am going to perform a clean lion install, migrate only documents, recreate all user accounts and manually reinstall all software, thus weeding out unused apps. Thoughs on this?

Brian
 
What kind of applications running on the computer? what I have read, no matter what you do, you won't be really getting that much of a speed increase by going to the 7200 RPM drive.

you might get a slight speed increase, but you'll have more heat, and a shorter battery life.
 
Young Spade said:
What kind of applications running on the computer? what I have read, no matter what you do, you won't be really getting that much of a speed increase by going to the 7200 RPM drive.

you might get a slight speed increase, but you'll have more heat, and a shorter battery life.
Click to expand...

Yup, this is right ... I installed a Momentus XT and I honestly don't notice a significant difference in anything.

My battery life is around 6 hours with Wi-FI and 50% brightness ... I'm not going to change a thing yet but I'll get a SATA III SSD once I can afford one.
 
Young Spade said:
What kind of applications running on the computer? what I have read, no matter what you do, you won't be really getting that much of a speed increase by going to the 7200 RPM drive.

you might get a slight speed increase, but you'll have more heat, and a shorter battery life.
Click to expand...

I've wondered about that too. I'm just not sure which way to go, I think my problem is all the leftovers from the 2010 macbook pro and the leftovers after the upgrade from SL. I'm thinking a clean install/rebuild will freshen it up nice. I just may go ahead and try that on my current hard drive, I get rid of unwanted apps and that should free up some space. I have an external 500 gb that I attached to it for extra storage when I'm home, but I wanted a little more on the road space, but I may not need it. Guess I'll try a clean install before I spend some dough. I'll report my results back here. Not sure when I'll get around to this task....hopefully this week sometime.


Brian
 
I got the G.Skill RAM from newegg for $40. Probably one of the best purchases I could make.

Next in line is an SSD HD but I'm waiting the prices to go down a little more...
 
thinkinblue613 said:
I got the G.Skill RAM from newegg for $40. Probably one of the best purchases I could make.

Next in line is an SSD HD but I'm waiting the prices to go down a little more...
Click to expand...

That is what I plan on doing this Christmas. The RAM plus the SSD would definitely add a few years to my MacBook Pro.
 
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