MacBook running really slow- is cleanmymac worth buying?

[Justgotosleepnow]

I've got the last white plastic MacBook, 500gb hard drive. Had it 6(ish?) years and it's always worked perfectly.

I'm learning how to code (v exciting!) and I've downloaded django, bootstrap, cyber duck etc & now it's running really slowly.

I've cleared out the trash file, and run the free part of cleanmymac 2 app, it has found 6gb to clean up, library files etc.

Is it worth paying the £35 to buy the full version?
Or is there any free cleanup software out there? Or a better paid program?

Many thanks, I really need to speed it up!

[Justgotosleepnow]

Oh I should have said, I had the original OS on it & never did the paid upgrade, then went directly to Maverick. And of course now it is running slowly. And now after installing extra programs it's really slow. Grrrr

[Justgotosleepnow]

Anyone?

[prism]

CleanMyMac won't help much, if at all. Actually I'm quite surprised your MacBook will run Mavericks, as I thought all of those white ones were below the minimum spec.

There are three things you can do:

1. Go back to OSX 10.6
   

2.Install a solid state hard drive. You need to think about how big a hard drive you need, as SSDs are much more expensive than normal hard drives, but it is like getting a new computer once it's done- the performance increase is huge.

1. Install more RAM- I'm not sure how much yours will take but I think the very last ones would take 8GB, which is quite a lot.
   

It's pretty easy to do the RAM and SSD (though you need a drive caddy to do the SSD) and if you think of it as being £100-£300 for a new computer (which is what it would feel like), it's not bad value. I like those white MacBooks, and have rejuvenated loads of them that way, to the delight of the owners, who thought they were going to have to chuck them away.

[Justgotosleepnow]

Thanks for the info Prism.
You are the second person saying get a solid state hard drive, so that might be a plan.

I knew I shouldn't have loaded mavericks, I knew it was too much of a leap (the last style of white mac book with trackpad). Darn it!

We bought it with extra memory and it's less than half used so I don't think it's memory lack of.

Sorry for being ignorant, but is the hard drive the memory? Can you link to an article explaining it to a non techie?

Many thanks

[prism]

No. "Memory" is an unfortunate term and dates from when computers didn't have hard drives, or really any storage at all, so the potential for confusion wasn't foreseen. Memory is in fact not what computers use to remember- it's what they use to think: Storage is where they leave stuff so it is still there when you switch off. That's why I tend to say "RAM" (ie Random Access Memory) rather than "memory", so as to make it clear I'm not talking about the hard drive. RAM comes on little chippy things: hard drives are small boxes. Having a bigger hard drive won't make your computer faster (well,not much) but having more RAM (ie, memory) will, as it will be able to think harder. But while it's thinking with its RAM, it's constantly grabbing stuff from storage (the hard drive), so solid state hard drives make a radical difference, as all that stuff happens so much faster, because there are no moving parts. If your hard drive starts to fill up, the computer will slow down as it's then difficult to put stuff away tidily in the hard drive, but that's not a situation you're in. The reason Mavericks slows it down is that it's constantly doing irrelevant things like drawing prettier icons or wondering whether the email you just got has anything to do with an appointment next Tuesday, etc: it's a bit like getting a new postman who insists on telling you his life story every time anything is delivered; it would be OK if the day was now 25 hours long, but it isn't.

[Justgotosleepnow]

Ok I'm sold, solid state hard drive it is

Loving the postman analogy btw

Thankyou for your help!

[CambridgeBlue]

That's a fab description prism - even after many years as a Mac user I still have trouble remembering what does what and why, that's simplified a lot for me :)