Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

A friend of my was showing her MacBook to me today. She has one of those 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo chip, 512MB RAM MacBook. It is so slow, I must admit I have never seen any Mac slow as her computer. Yet, she hardly had anything on her computer. If there is no hardware problem, what can she do to make it faster? Apart from upgrade the RAM, is there anything else she can do?
Cheers
Nathan

The RAM upgrade will be the single most important thing she can do.

Max it out to 3GB.

What was she running that seemed slow?

Steve

P.S. Seconded on the RAM upgrade. 512 MB is simply not enough, especially with Leopard.

Yeah, I used Tiger on a machine with only 512 MB RAM for a while, and it was paging all the time, enough to be really annoying. And that was a PPC machine - it's going to be far worse on an Intel running Leopard that has both Rosetta and the integrated graphics eating away at the RAM.

How about painting flames on it? (Sorry, just kidding.)

Upgrade the ram... it's cheap and easy.

oh yeah, even with 1GB she'll see a BIG improvement in performance, but I'd suggest 2GB or more!

FLAMES? how about a wing?

Speed holes!

I came across this article a while ago. I don't know if any of it helps or is of use to you, but I'd thought I'd share anyways.

The first thing I would do would be to buy RAM. Macsales has some pretty good deals.

Thanks guys, I thought that particular version of MacBook cannot take anything more then 2GB of RAM, can she have 3GB?
She is using Tiger, and she really didn't have many stuffs on it, should I install 10.5 for her after she gets the upgrade of the RAM?

It can address up to 3GB.

Upgrade RAM first, then install Leopard.

I would get the RAM first. Run Tiger and see how it is. If it works OK and she's DESPERATE to try Leopard, then go ahead, otherwise I'd stick with Tiger for just a bit.

RAM's the best way to get less frustration out of a laptop.

After that, put in a larger and faster HD, satisfaction level will go way up.

I know already that I can't top "speed holes," so I'm not going to try. BUT! I did want to pipe in and suggest the ol' delete-everything-and-reinstall. If a laptop has had software on it for a couple of years, it always seems to be much snappier after one of those. Especially if the hard drive is really, really full when you start. :-)

And Leopard's the best way to get it back in.

Stick with Tiger. It's faster.

That's more of a PC thing unless the user is running out of disc space. By far the biggest bang for the buck is as much RAM as the machine will take. Then bigger / faster hd. Then Leopard.

Not on my MBP C2D. I bet it's going to be faster on the MB C2D as well. I know it is on my MB C2D.

Leopard is generally faster, but RAM hungrier - if the computer does not have the RAM to give Leopard some elbow room, it can be slower than Tiger.

Hence the upgrade.

Right.

You're probably right. Leopard is, in my experience, slower on a G4, but it's probably faster on an Intel chip (again, provided you load it up with RAM, preferably 2 GB or more).

I don't think it's an architecture issue - Leopard is faster on my G4 - as long as it has enough RAM. My guess is the G4 you are thinking of has less than 1.5GB?

Just to echo what everyone else has said - more RAM! 512 isnt enough, not even close! 2GB minimum! 3GB if its not that much ore expensive.

Leopard is almost exactly the same on my iMac G5 as Tiger was, but it is slower on my minimum requirement G4.