MAC very slow, 5 yo

[DrinkFeckArseGirls]

Can you please tell me what can I do to make it quicker? I'm gonna lose my shit in a minute. It takes so much of my time to wait

[ziggyziggy]

i think you're about at the time you need to get a new one, they all seem to run slow after a few years!!

you can get good refurb jobbies from the apple mac stores, google apple refurb. it will save you a lot compared to a new one. perfectly good!

you could try re-installing your OS but not before backing all your data up. Apparently this can help

Also delete as many extraneous files as poss to free up some hard drive space.

otherwise i am not a massive techy but they might help.

[DrinkFeckArseGirls]

Thanks! I will try that. I'm just so incredulous that it's supposed to be such good technology at such a high price but it's really a pile of shite that doesn't last. There's nothing wrong with it as such, just bloody slow.

[ziggyziggy]

also could you get some more ram for it? crucial do cheap ram and i think it's relatively easy to install. you need to match up so both slots have the same amount or something (read up on it) so you might need to get two of the same amount.

[0x530x610x750x630x79]

Apple insist you take upgrades don't they?

All upgrades are written for the newest shinyest machines, and bring old ones to grinding slowness.

It could also be you see other peoples newer comps running so much faster and what was fast 5 years ago isn't good enough now.

[CatCoriander]

Mine is exactly the same and only about 3 years old. It can just about handle three tabs in Firefox before it grinds to a halt. I don't understand why it doesn't have any tools like defrag to clean it up.

[Metacentric]

Apple insist you take upgrades don't they?

No.

All upgrades are written for the newest shinyest machines, and bring old ones to grinding slowness.

I'm running El Capitan Beta 3 on a 2007 iMac and a 2010 Air and it's extremely good. Beta 3 appears to have a smaller memory footprint than Yosemite.

I don't understand why it doesn't have any tools like defrag to clean it up.

Because like most Unix systems, the filesystem is nothing like as prone to fragmentation. If it puts your mind to rest, unplug your Time Machine backup, perform a fresh OS install and then reload the Time Machine backup. Half an hour's work plus a few hours unattended while it reloads the data. However, if you're doing that, the solution for all older Macs to make them as fast as new machines is to spend 75 quid and shove an SSD in, assuming that it has the maximum amount of RAM in.

It is true to say that Macs are currently close to unusable with less than 4GB of RAM in them. But with the exception of a tiny handful of early Airs which we can probably discount, anything sold with less than 4GB of RAM which will run remotely modern versions of OSX can be cheaply and easily upgraded to 4GB with a screw driver (Macbook Pro, iMac) or a couple of putty knives (Mac Mini).