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robowens · Oct 30, 2009, 01:30 PM

I got this white MacBook of mine back at the end of 2007 (Christmas time), and since then I've had nothing but problem after problem (even if they were minor ones). I'm a student, and Apple gave me a really hard time about helping me out or even diagnosing the problem. It's since fallen out of warranty (I'm sure they're pleased). They consistently told me it was my fault I was having problems and that I purposely broke it. I won't bore you guys with that story, but anyways...

So I erased and installed everything when I upgraded to 10.6. Reloaded everything manually, and the computer's ran great up until about 2 weeks ago. Now it's giving me the same problems it did to me back in 10.5. Slooooooooooooooooooooow. So slow! I upgraded to 4GB RAM back when I got it and it's slower than my WINDOWS VISTA computer with 2GB RAM (and it's got a cheap-o processor in it). I don't get it... At idle, it's using 2GB RAM with nothing open. I don't have anything crazy running on it, and there's no login-type items running. All that's really installed is CS4, Microsoft Office '08, and Firefox. Nothing's out of the ordinary here. It's just a normal, daily-used computer that's used by a normal student. I'm actually really careful with it. It's always in a case. It looks great for being as old as it is. Is there anything I can do to at least get it working right until the end of 2009?

Thanks in advance,
Rob

JCP21 · Oct 30, 2009, 03:51 PM

What ram did you put in it? Or did you get it directly from apple?

ibook_steve · Oct 30, 2009, 03:59 PM

Does Activity Monitor indicate anything using excessive CPU?

Steve

amazing · Oct 30, 2009, 05:52 PM

I'm wondering if the HD is going bad. How much empty space do you have, and have you installed SmartReporter (free).

dowNNshift · Oct 30, 2009, 05:59 PM

The stock hard drives Apple puts in the MacBooks are not the greatest 5400RPM. That translates into a mid-grade general use drive. Reason I bring this up is that you mentioned that you're using CS4.

Adobe apps move a lot of data, much of which is cached or stored on the hard drive. Hard drives wear out, and those that are used as scratch disks go faster. You should consider purchasing a quality 7200RPM 2.5-in notebook sized hard drive and then performing a clean install of Snow Leopard. You should follow up monthly by using a quality disk utility like Alsoft Disk Warrior to optimize the internal directory.

On MacBooks, replacing the physical hard drive is pretty easy -- just as easy as upgrading your memory was. But if you're gonna do a bunch of design work on your Mac, you really aught to invest in an external FW or USB external drive that is able to handle the heavy lifting and cacheing that design work has.

robowens · Nov 2, 2009, 11:33 PM

Thanks for the replies!

I just got the HD replaced by Western Digital, as my other one (a 500GB) was just about to die on me. WD support owns. Smart status on the new drive is OK.

I believe the RAM is Corsair, but it's the special "Apple Memory" cause NewEgg happened to have that on sale when I was ordering.

Nothing is out of the ordinary in Activity Monitor. The most CPU usage is coming from WindowServer, which is a critical OSX task, so I don't know...

My plan is to get a MBP eventually, but I just can't afford it right now... I'd be ecstatic if we could get this stupid thing to work right for a while!

Thanks,
Rob