Did you say it needed a new battery? If the battery is dead / removed and you are on mains power then MacBooks automatically reduce the processor power (bit of a “feature”). It looks like this may also be the same with MacBook pros Linky

Vimto, nice one. Had heard that might be a theory off someone, to have it confirmed is a bonus.

Right, new battery time then… And a bloody keyboard whilst I’m at it too! Might even put a new HD in after if all goes well… Just my luck the motherboard would then die!

is it really worth it? a new macbookpro will be so much faster than a 5 year old one.

is it really worth it? a new macbookpro will be so much faster than a 5 year old one.

I just love the “throw it in the bin, buy a new one” mentality, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Again for those not paying attention… I do not have £1k sitting around to buy a new one! Nice as it would be, i can’t afford it. They’re only about twice the speed overall of my old machine (when it’s running right at least), so it wouldn’t be that significant for what I use it for anyway, tasks which aren’t that processor intensive to be honest.

Just to confirm, the good man vimto up there is indeed correct. If there was a like, or thank button I could press, I’d smack it a good few times for you!

Managed to borrow a battery this afternoon, fired my laptop up, ran geekbench, got a score of 2996!!! More than twice what it was, and about 300 points higher than I was expecting!

So new battery to be ordered for definite… And a keyboard is only £39 and doesn’t look too hard to fit to be fair…

Really? That is a very odd feature, especially if run off the mains, why throttle back the CPU?
Bizarre, but at least a happy ending 😉

That is a weird feature, unless the battery helps with cooling somehow (maybe the airflow isn’t right without it)?

I explained to them in the shop why I needed to borrow a battery for a couple of minutes, and they looked at me like I was a weirdo. Sure enough though, popped the battery in the computer and fired it up, which it did quicker than normal, then ran geekbench which took half the time and gave twice the result.

Don’t know why it is, can only speculate that it’s probably to dowith the relatively low power of the Apple MagSafe Power adaptor, and relatively high TDP of the processor in the machine, discrete GFX, 7200rpm drive etc. meaning that on full whack, the power adapter can’t provide enough juice on its own. Would be interesting to see if left to do something like rip a DVD using handbrake, would you come back to it an hour later and despite being plugged in the whole time, the battery is now only 70% full!

Actually Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, so fo slow performance issues, there are a few things you can check:
* Check your Login Items under System Preferences > Accounts to see what you have automatically launching.
* Also check /Library/LaunchAgents/ and /Users/yourusername/Library/LaunchAgents/ for items launching at startup
* Look at what widgets you may have running.
* Launch Activity Monitor and change “My Processes” at the top to “All Processes”. Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.
* Take a look at the System Memory tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor to see if you have excessive “page outs”, a sign that you may benefit from more RAM.
* Make sure you’re not running any 3rd party antivirus app, as many of those will drain resources, reducing performance. They’re not needed to protect your Mac.

Also let Speed Up Mac to perform a health check of the computer. Regards.