I have a late 2007 iMac 2.4 Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB ram in it. I have a 500GB HD with 130GB free and I am running Mavericks on it. I have gone through several of the "how to speed up your mac" threads and have barely anything that starts up when the iMac is booted up. I have run the ONYX program and repaired all the permissions and all of the other things that it does. Rebooted the iMac to clear the RAM.. I don't know what else to do. This thing beachballs and takes FOREVER to open up almost any program. I run "Freememory" to make sure I am not running the RAM into the ground and even when I have 1.5GB of free RAM it still runs slow.
This thing ran WAAAY faster with Snow Leopard on it. I just don't think Apple should have even allowed my machine to be upgraded to Mavericks if they knew it was going to run this slow. It is really an embarrassment. I am not able to purchase a new iMac at this time so I am stuck with what I have. I almost wish I never upgraded to Mavericks.
IMPORTANT: Just realised I had only read the first page when I posted this. Disregard it please. I'll let it stay however, because some of the information may still be worth a damn, even though it's probably not.
Getting an SSD upgrade is a fine idea, sure, but think about a few things first. Your machine has aged quite a lot. A low end Air is faster at this point. If the general system speed is acceptable, then fair enough. But do you want to spend money on this iMac? Second, you could just go back to Snow Leopard. I mean, if it worked fine with SL, reverting is an option. Have a disc around? Delete the drive and install from the disc.
Regarding whether an SSD + HDD mix would behave like a Fusion drive, the short answer is: No, but it can.
The OS would see each drive as a separate entity, and not treat them like a Fusion Drive (there are also caching drives, which also don't work like Fusion, but somewhat the same idea)
To make it a Fusion Drive however, you could do some CoreStorage manipulation with the Terminal. There are many guides around the web. Just search for manual Fusion Drive creation or something.
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My wife has a 2007 Core 2 Duo MBP (15") running 10.10. Similar issue, glad I found this thread. She does all her work on her computer and it is embarrassingly slow, I finish grad school in May and have a job lined up...but don't anticipate being able to afford a new computer until Aug. or so. Wondering if I should do the same. A few questions here to help me decide.
1. Looking at this drive - my wife is actually pretty good about keeping her drive relatively clean and we have a NAS. This is a temporary fix remember, and we are on a SUPER tight budget right now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178340
2. The RAM is at 4GB (2x2GB) - I feel like I've seen somewhere that this computer will recognize some conformation of RAM allowing 6 GB total...can anyone confirm that is true or false? If by some miracle it is true...where can I get the right chips?
3. Assuming I can make this computer last a little longer, is waiting on Skylake my best best for longevity? I mean Aug/Sept. seems like about the time it should be showing up in rMBPs - even if I have to wait until Oct. it seems like the logical thing to do.
Thanks in advance.
1) Sure. That'll do I'd say
2) 4GB sounds fairly alright with a faster drive. With Mavericks/Yosemite it'll act as 6gigs with memory compression. I'm not sure about that computer scenically, but if it can do 6, it should be able to do 8.
3) Yeah, wait for Skylake. Or well, if Apple releases Broadwell rMBPs I find it unlikely we'll see Skylake ones anytime soon, so contextually. Honestly though, GPU performance matters more and more these days, so I'd say the biggest benefit of waiting would be the 950m/r7-r9 whatever the hell they'll put in the next one.
This is old MBPro and it has sata, not pcie bus, so it can't use full SSD speed. If you have older computer, think about ram memory - SSD is only used to launch OS and apps, but everything runs in ram.