extremely slow macbook...?

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I am on a white plastic macbook 2.4 GHz intel core 2 duo with 2 GB of memory, running OS 10.8.5, and everything is unbelievably slow. I click on the wireless icon and I get the spinning wheel of death. I try to open a new window on chrome, and nothing happens for a long time. I open the laptop after sleeping, and it takes around 2 minutes to wake everything up so that the mouse moves.

Activity monitor shows that the 2 CPUs are doing practically nothing, 85% idle. Sometimes there is only about 14 Mb of memory free, but even if a lot is free, it is still slow. The Finder is even slow.

Ok, it *is* faster when there is plenty of memory free, but still - should I not be running chrome? it seems like a complete memory hog.
 

pigoo3

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2017 15" MBP, 16gig ram, 1TB SSD, OS 10.15
Read the "beachballs" and "speedup" links in my signature. Also...2gig of ram is not so much. If you can upgrade this...I would suggest it.

- Nick
 

bobtomay

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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
2 GB memory is, quite frankly, not enough for OS X 10.8.

However, the next question begging to be asked is what is the used and free space on your drive? Open Disk Utility to check, not Finder.

The second question is, how did you install 10.8 on a white MacBook since 10.8 requires a late '08 aluminum MacBook minimum?
 
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It came with that installed - it is a borrowed laptop. And this is a mid-2010 macbook. I have lots of free space on my drive. I think you're right about the memory. But the guy I borrowed it from doesn't care, although I'll probably spend the 100 bucks to get 8 more gigs..until my new macair comes. **** jetlag! I left my macair on the RER D in paris...:-(
 
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Read the "beachballs" and "speedup" links in my signature. Also...2gig of ram is not so much. If you can upgrade this...I would suggest it.

- Nick
Thanks, I am trying all those tricks, but I think you've pointed out the real problem - memory. But chrome is *still* a memory hog...
 

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