I have a 2009 macbook pro 15″ 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB ram. It’s been running slow since I upgraded to El Capitan. I used mostly the Adobe suite. I was wondering if I maxed the ram out to 8GB and installed a SS drive would that improve the performance? Or is it a case of getting something newer as it’s 6 years old.

Yep, 8 GB and an SSD will make a huge difference.

What make of Ram and SSD are recommended?

Just look on crucial.com, they have an app you run which will tell you the options.

If you’re after absolute max speed you could hunt out the fastest SSD (I did for processing 10s of Gb of photos), but you’ll pay a premium for it.

When I up graded my MacBook I used Crucial ram and SSD and all worked fine.

Thanks footflaps.

Mine was doing the same, i found some nasty plugins, got rid and its flying now!
Im no expert but it helped massively.

As above, your Mac should be faster with EC not slower. Yes more RAM & an SSD will help (massively in the case of the SSD) but there’s some other issue here.

Some SSD reviews:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,review-32904-2.html

Mine has also been crap since I upgraded after 4 years of flawless performance. Haven’t been using it enough to worry about it but I’ll certainly read through all the advice.

ine was doing the same, i found some nasty plugins,

Anything I should be looking out for?

I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Yosemite when it came out, and then recently to El Capitan. It just feels really slow. Opening chrome takes an age to load up.

Just upgraded my ’11 MBP from 4 to 16Gb and its transformed it. Selling a ’11 MBAir to fund a new SSD.

Shame my iPad and iPhone are so slow now but not going to replace either anytime soon!

Have you used Activity Monitor to find out where the bottleneck is and what’s causing it? If it’s a rogue program or plugin you should be able to see what it is and remove or disable it. If your normal processes are maxing out the CPU then maybe it’s time for a new machine, otherwise more RAM and an ssd or sshd may be enough.

I had a massive problem with Mac Mail eating up all the memory. Spent 1/2 a day on the phone with apple support. In th end I gave up and rebuilt the machine from scratch. All was fine and dandy afterwards.

I found an SSD made a big difference.

I went for a Samsung EVO 850 I think, works well, no issues.

Went for 16gb of ram also as it’s cheap, went for Crucial, again no issues.

I’ve check the Activity monitor and I can’t see anything causing a problem. I’m tempted to just upgrade the ram as it’s cheap to see what effect that has.

Sorry to hijack the thread op.
My MacBook Pro mid 2010 needs a new battery (has done 1000+ cycles), anyone have any recommendations for batteries or should I just get one from apple? Also is it worth upgrading to an SSD ~ £150 for 500gb or just worth selling and buying a newer one.

Cheers
Gabe

SSD is always worth it, as is maxing the RAM for your particular motherboard.

Not sure on the battery but going with an apple one can’t hurt.

OP If you where on a budget you could change just the disc which IMO would make more difference than the ram. I say this as I upped the ram in my wife’s 2012 MBP from 4 to 10 (note one 8gb chip can be cheaper than 2×4 and yiu end up with 10 not 8, it runs fine you don’t really need matched pairs)

You can run a disk speed check by down loading the free BlackMagic speed test programme. I suspect you’ll see a read/wrote speed around 30-40. An SSD will run st 250. FYI I put in a normal hard drive running at 7200rpm vs 5400 as standard which made a big difference and is much cheaper than an SSD (eg 750gb hard drive is £65).

Not sure how “techs” you are, ram is trivial but the drive change requires a bit more care in terms of software transfer, the best is to “clone” the drive by attaching the new one to the computer in a cheap external cradle. Then try booting from the new one while it’s still outside the machine, if all goes well put it inside

@gabe if you’ve the budget buy a new machine and sell your old one, you should get £500 maybe more I think

I have one of these: MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)

a screw just fell out of the back of it, I fear it may die soon. I hope not!!

Best take it in to the living vacuous hell that is the piousness bar, oh i can’t wait.

in a side note I’ve had a sucession of MBP’s and they have all been very very good. I hate them.

Mines a 2011 with 4gb of ram

It’s currently running yosemite and seems slow, fan seems to be running a lot too

Would a ram upgrade be the best place to start? 8gb or 16?

Is it a good idea to upgrade to el capitan?

I’m also on a late 2011 MBP, since I ‘upgraded’ to Yosemite it creeps, freezes and is generally poor. I’ve just put El Capitan on it and it’s better but still pretty laggy and slower than it once was.

I’m hoping a RAM upgrade and SSD will give the machine a new lease of life before I feel the need to throw it through the window and buy a new one!

I’ve check the Activity monitor and I can’t see anything causing a problem. I’m tempted to just upgrade the ram as it’s cheap to see what effect that has.

another thing you can do is have the Console open, and note if it is continuously spewing out the same error(s) especially when the machine slows down. Then Google the errors to see if there is an easy solution. I did this when I upgraded to Mavericks (problem with Mail slowing everything down)

Thanks zilog6128, I will check later after work. Thanks jambalaya for your thoughts, I’m not really on a budget. I was just wondering if I upgraded some bits if it would make a difference. Being truthful the battery is bad as well. I was planning on doing the upgrades myself, but it maybe better to just buy a new machine.

I’ve got a late 08 2.0GHz, l’ve maxed out the RAM & added an SSD (Samsung Evo) + new battery. Running El Capitan just fine. These were the last MacBooks you can easily upgrade yourself, so I’d keep it.
Not looking to replace mine anytime soon.

kiwijohn, did you notice a real difference after doing that compared with before?

Oh yes. You might think it’s a slow old processor, but you won’t know it with the ram & ssd.

Thanks kiwijohn, thats encouraging. I’m thinking it’s worth upgrading it first before buying something newer. Like you said, it’s the last of the one’s you can upgrade yourself.

As an update. I upgraded mine as above late 2011 MBP with a 125gb SSD and 8g ram from Crucial. It has turned it into a new computer! It flies now running El Cap.

Total cost was £120. I bought a 2.5″ SATA USB Enclosure from eBay for £2.50, placed the new drive in it and cloned my old drive to it, took 4hrs to copy 190GB of files.

I then followed an online guide to swap the drives over after making sure the new one had all the info on it, and whilst the case was open swapped the RAM. I then put the old 500GB drive into the enclosure so I have a back up drive.

Total job time was 25 mins after the files had copied. you’d need a Phillips 00 screwdriver and a T6 torx screwdriver. Well worth doing IMO.

They will make some difference. A core 2 duo doesn’t quite cut it these days. The GPU will be pretty weak even compared to some integrated graphics chipsets too.

I say this based on my experience. I had a 2007 C2D MBP. Upped the RAM. Put in an SSD. it made a big difference but the age showed when my SO got a 13″ retina MBP. It was so much better I bit the bullet and got a 15″ rMBP. I’d get a new machine over upgrading. The MBP will still fetch a fair sum on eBay despite its age.

[edit] if you’re using any of the Adobe suite getting a new machine will change your experience from masochism to acceptability.

[edit] battery poster. Get an apple one. All the non-apple ones I put in my old MBP and my SO’s MB were unsatisfactory: warping, short life, poor charge holding.

2009 Core 2 duo macbook here running perfectly fine on El Capitan with 4GB RAM (maxed out) and a 1TB Hybrid drive with 8GB of SSD. It started running slow with mountain lion, upped the RAM and replaced the drive and all has been fine since. Not doing anything particularly taxing on it, some very light video clipping/editing, but it runs as well as it did on day 1, except it now takes about 40 seconds to boot up instead of about 10 seconds.

The Hybrid drive is far cheaper than an SSD drive so if you want a large capacity one you can get one without spending more than your computer is worth (unless SSD drive prices have plummeted in the last 18 months).

wobbliscott – Member
2009 Core 2 duo macbook here running perfectly fine on El Capitan with 4GB RAM (maxed out)

Is your macbook the alloy or plastic? My late 08 alloy has 8Gb now, though I think it’s only officially rated for 4Gb.
Mine is definitely running better on the newer OS since mountain lion. Even though it’s just used for browsing these days, still need the cd drive to share with the iMac.

I am thinking of just getting a newer one as I’m going to be using it for work. Anyone do graphic design on a 13″ retina one? Do you find it small or under powered?

Out of interest, how difficult is it to fit an SSD and upgraded RAM to a Macbook Pro?

Mine’s a bit on the slow side so I was thinking about upgrading with stuff from Crucial rather than spending a fortune on a new Macbook.

Kiwijohn – it’s the plastic one with the rounded edges, the basic white macbook. I think it was the Crucial scan that identified the hardware and the 4GB limit. I keep expecting it to give up any day, it can’t have too much life left in it as it gets hammered every day, but so far it’s holding up, which is just as well as I can’t afford to replace it at the moment.

I recently upgraded my OS from snow leopard on my macbook pro 2009.

I read a lot of bad reviews on el capitan slowing things down so decided to go to mavericks instead.

Bought a copy off ebay and apart from a couple of power pc programs not being compatible (office for mac 2004 & wiretap pro). It seems to be running just fine.

Replaced office with libre and all seems well.

Jumped my ram up to 8gb a few years back and also added a 750gb hd at the same time.

My next upgrade would be an ssd drive

I would suggest the op runs malwarebytes to ensure no adware is present and then scan with sophos