iMac slows to a crawl, too old?

I am trying to remotely advise my 80 year old best friend, he has been struggling lately with his spam email (using Comcast's email mostly, are they worse than others at filtering?) overwhelming his inbox getting in his way and him clicking on some of them by mistake but more importantly the machine is slowing to a halt where he needs to walk away and come back a couple of hours later to complete an email or other document. Might he have been hijacked via a nefarious email? he is using:

iMac (20 - inch, Early 2009) OS X El Capitan Version 10.11.6
Processor 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 2 GB 106 7 MHZ DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9400 256 MB

Is reinstalling this OS likely to help? get rid of the slowdown?
Should he upgrade the OS?


any advice is welcome! thank you!

The 2GB of memory is throttling his machine. It can handle 8GB. What capacity hard drive and how much free space is on it is a critical question.

The biggest bang for his buck would be to install a Solid State Drive which means cracking it open. Without adequate memory and an efficient hard drive he is being left f-a-r- behind and a nine year old iMac is not worth spending too much money on.

The SSD is the best thing going. I replaced my old HD with one and it's like a new machine. By the time the Safari icon gets to the top of its' first bounce...it's open. BTW...my iMac is a late 2009.

When replacing the hard drive is it difficult to transfer over the OS?

Is this the correct RAM and amount (2x4gb)?

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/imac-(20-inch,-mid-2009)-imac9,1/CT3309374


thanks for the help!

dziwei said:

When replacing the hard drive is it difficult to transfer over the OS?

Click to expand...

An easy way to do this is "clone" the contents of the old HD using an app like Super Duper or CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner)...then copy the clone to the new drive .

dziwei said:

Is this the correct RAM and amount (2x4gb)?

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/imac-(20-inch,-mid-2009)-imac9,1/CT3309374

Click to expand...

Yes.

- Nick

So just to be certain: re-installing the OS on its own is not likely to help alleviate the slow downs... at all/enough?

thanks so much!

I don't think so...not that I'm an expert by any means. A new SSD from Macsales did the trick. It's faster than when it was new. You won't be disappointed. They also have a video How To and installation kit.

Did you buy a 2.5" ssd with 3.5" adapter or just the drive by itself?

I bought the kit...had everything including the heat sensor.