Upgrade Advice

hey guys -
i'm getting tired of waiting for applications to load up on my current macbook these days and looking to upgrade to a faster model (maybe). Here is my current macbook specs (it's a mid 2010 model)

2.4 Ghz
15.4-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display (1440 x 900 pixel)
4GB SDRAM
320GB Hard Drive Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
High Power Graphics Card! NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory

now should I upgrade to a 2011/12 macbook pro or simple replace my current HD with an SSD which i've heard would dramatically improve my laptop's speed. Curious to know others thoughts and would appreciate your advice thanks,

upgrade to ssd and ram to 8gb would be the best for your mbp.

ycl1688 said:

upgrade to ssd and ram to 8gb would be the best for your mbp.

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SSD perhaps, but RAM is not going to speed up loading anything.

@OP, what version of OS X are you running? Have you run any application like OnyX to clean out your system? Have you repaired permissions lately? Let's try some routine maintenance first..

SSDs do improve load times but you need to first confrim that your problem is the HD..

Hey ash I run a cleaner everyday and repair permissions with disk utility on a weekly basis on my macbook, it speeds it up a bit, but nothing to the level i'd like to see my system running at.

radoja said:

...but nothing to the level i'd like to see my system running at.

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This is like a dog chasing its tail...our computers will NEVER be as fast as we would like them to be!

But with the maintenance activities you're already performing regularly, upgrading the ram, and installing an SSD...your computer will certainly be running as fast as it ever will!

- Nick

p.s. By the way...with a 15" display...you have a MacBook Pro...not a "MacBook" as stated in the original post.

haha agreed : )
After seeing how fast these macbook pros run on an SSD it's pretty unbelievable...I wasn't sure if upgrading to a quad processor as opposed to keeping my current dual one would make a huge difference. I don't game with my laptop, just watch movies and use MS Office a lot. I have a lot of stuff installed though, I stil have to wait half a minute for Word to open up. very frustrating when i'm running multiple apps.

radoja said:

Hey ash I run a cleaner everyday and repair permissions with disk utility on a weekly basis on my macbook, it speeds it up a bit, but nothing to the level i'd like to see my system running at.

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It is a known fact that the ssd will get a boast to your mbp, with newer technology things will improve, without second guess upgrade to your drive and since you will be removing the lower lid of your mbp might as well get the ram update done. Make sure you get the right ram and the ssd is sata 3 in case you are not happy with the improvement, at least you can use the ssd for the newer macbook pro. Instead of buying a new mbp, the model you have still consider new. This is just my 2 cents.

radoja said:

Hey ash I run a cleaner everyday and repair permissions with disk utility on a weekly basis on my macbook, it speeds it up a bit, but nothing to the level i'd like to see my system running at.

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What "cleaner" are you talking about? That level of maintenance is wholly unnecessary and actually may be part of your problem. If you are wiping out your cache files every day, then no wonder you are having issues! It takes time to rebuild those constantly.

An SSD would be a great boost, but before you look into that, you say you have a 320 GB drive @ 5400 RPM? How much FREE space do you have? A bigger HDD @ 7200 RPM may be a better solution for the money.

Depending on what apps you regularly run on your Mac, and what version of OS X you are running, upgrading the RAM beyond 4 GB may be of negligible benefit, or it may be tremendous.

+ 1 on the above advice

320GB isn't much space (depending on how you use it). Letting your disk free space drop below 15% (50GB in your case) will begin to significantly impact your performance.

haha agreed : )
After seeing how fast these macbook pros run on an SSD it's pretty unbelievable...I wasn't sure if upgrading to a quad processor as opposed to keeping my current dual one would make a huge difference. I don't game with my laptop, just watch movies and use MS Office a lot. I have a lot of stuff installed though, I stil have to wait half a minute for Word to open up. very frustrating when i'm running multiple apps.

radoja said:

haha agreed : )
After seeing how fast these macbook pros run on an SSD it's pretty unbelievable...I wasn't sure if upgrading to a quad processor as opposed to keeping my current dual one would make a huge difference. I don't game with my laptop, just watch movies and use MS Office a lot. I have a lot of stuff installed though, I stil have to wait half a minute for Word to open up. very frustrating when i'm running multiple apps.

Click to expand...

If it is taking half a minute just for Word to open up, then you have serious issues unrelated to the speed of your CPU and graphics card. You really need to elaborate more on what "a lot of stuff" is as well as the other points I brought up. I'm skeptical you need more RAM, though whatever that other "stuff" is may be eating up too much of what you have, especially AV and "cleaning" software. See my signature.

pigoo3 said:

This is like a dog chasing its tail...our computers will NEVER be as fast as we would like them to be!

But with the maintenance activities you're already performing regularly, upgrading the ram, and installing an SSD...your computer will certainly be running as fast as it ever will!

- Nick

p.s. By the way...with a 15" display...you have a MacBook Pro...not a "MacBook" as stated in the original post.

Click to expand...

Folks sure are picky with everything here. We understood what the original poster intended to say. That is one thing that gets me upset with some Mac people. Cut the guy a break Nick. ;-).

Paul