Before i hit the buy button at Crucial and buy 8gb of ram.

Currently have a 2.26ghz macbook pro with a huge 2gb of ram running Lion. I find the computer can slow down a lot at times.

I notice that web browsers eat memory as does aperture, photoshop etc. This slowing also includes things like Office. If i max the memory out is it actually going to help? Thinking about it, if i downgrade the OS would that make things faster?

What year is your machine? What processor? I’m assuming it’s a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, but not sure.

If i max the memory out is it actually going to help?

Yes significantly. It won’t make your machine faster, but it will stop it slowing down all the time.

Thinking about it, if i downgrade the OS would that make things faster?

Hard to say. I’ve seen lots of benchmarks of a machines speed on Snow Leopard Vs Lion, and it seems that anything with a Core 2 Duo processor or older is very marginally faster (we are talking maybe 1% overall though) on Snow Leopard, and anything with a newer processor is marginally (again a very small number) faster on Lion. Personally, I don’t think it makes enough of a difference, and though I was reluctant at first, I think the benefits of Lion just about outweigh the disadvantages now it’s a bit more mature and stable.

Got to be said though, if your machine is a C2D machine, the newer i5 and i7 machines are not just a bit faster, but a ridiculous amount faster. Massively so in fact, worth considering selling your machine on and buying a newer one at a decent price certainly. The processor makes a BIG difference of course.

Sounds like you’ve got the same MBP as me, even 4gb made a massive improvement. Didn’t notice any speed difference between SL and Lion though. I run Lightroom a lot, processor still handles even raw processing fine.

Check Amazon before you pull the trigger, they stock Crucial stuff as well so it might be cheaper there.

yes c2d processor, and not in the position to sell at the moment, Ebay suggests £500 for what i have, which means finding around £500 for a new laptop or £35 for some memory. the new laptop may be faster but it won’t be £500 faster.

the new laptop may be faster but it won’t be £500 faster.

Actually, on the basis that your machine is worth £500, it will be more than £500 faster in processor intensive tasks.

But whether it’s worth it or not to you, or you can find the extra £500, is a whole other issue.

Definitely upgrade the RAM though, even just 4Gig will make a difference, but if 8Gig is so cheap (was about £38 3 months ago in my i7 MBP) then it’s worth it. I had slow downs occassionally with 4Gig, don’t now I’ve got 8.

if i downgrade the OS would that make things faster?

You need snow leopard or lion to use more than 4GB of RAM (previous versions of OSX weren’t 64bit).

open Activity Monitor, go to System Memory tab. Run your normal programs, then look at the Swap Used field. If it’s a big number (more than a few hundred meg) then yes it’ll probably be noticeable.*

An SSD would also probably be a good upgrade seeing as you have Lion.

* IIRC Photoshop still uses its own implementation of swap – ‘scratch disc’ so avoid using that as a test program as it won’t appear as Swap in Activity Monitor.

If it’s a bit number (more than a few hundred meg) then yes it’ll probably be noticeable.

I guess 2Gb is a big number?

I guess 2Gb is a big number?

So you have an app running that requires 2GB of RAM to run…

And your machine has how many GB of RAM fitted again did you say? 😉

Spend the £35 on 8GB of new RAM, it will make a tonne of difference.

Though that said, what speed RAM do you need? I’ve got 4GB of 1333MHz RAM that came out of my new MBP that I’m not using somewhere (i’ll dig it out)… Yours for £12 if you want it. 4GB will still make a big difference BTW.

I would recommend…

Step 1 – buy more RAM (max you can afford – it’s cheap as chips these days)

Step 2 – buy an SSD drive. Perhaps only 128GB, depending on what you use OSX for (i.e. do you have another place for pictures/music/vids, etc).

Step 3 – do a re-install of the OS on the new disk. It will be lightning fast!

glenh – just ‘cos the OS is 32bit, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s slower…

The benefits of an SSD are largely dependent on what you use your computer for. It will boot stupidly quick but after that any programmes you start get loaded into the RAM anyway. Stuff like Photoshop and Lightroom aren’t limited by drive speeds

Even for ‘everyday’ tasks, an SSD drive is a noticable difference.

To some people, the computer just feels faster in everything they do/open/save/edit.

with a huge 2gb of ram running Lion

You’re taking the pi55, right?

If you wanna speed up your machine then check out Onyx (for Lion). It cleans up all kinds of stuff – just beware what you tinker with though. Tis free too.

Upgraded my MPB to 8Gb and 256Gb SSD recently… The difference is quite amazing!

glenh – just ‘cos the OS is 32bit, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s slower…

Yeah, but if it’s 32bit it won’t be able to physically use 8GB of memory, which means it’d be a complete waste of money getting it – which is what glenh was pointing out.

You’re taking the pi55, right?

I might have been, anyway 8gb on its way.

I’d recommend going the SSD+HDD route

You can replace the internal DVD drive with an SSD using a caddy like this:
internal caddy

You then put your DVD drive in an external USB enclosure like this:
external superdrive caddy

I have my MBP setup so that OSX and desktop reside on the SSD
My documents, photos and other shite live on the HDD
(you active this using unix symbolic links..)

If I want to work with a file at lightning speed I just drop from photos folder onto the desktop/SSD and work from there. The machine also re-boots in under 10s which is handy. It’s also a really stable mod – if I didn’t tell you it had been done you wouldn’t notice until you try and slot a DVD in.

If you are feeling brave and want help to do this – ping me a message.

well i know have 8gig of ram and it seems to be much faster.