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May 24, 2013, 2:39am

The British Mac Forum :: Chat :: Ye Olde Mac & Mouse :: Showing Signs of Age

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Topic: Showing Signs of Age (Read 123 times)

waylandd
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Showing Signs of Age
« Thread Started on Feb 7, 2012, 12:05pm »

Hi

My Imac, like me, is starting to show signs of age and slowing down, I've just been told that, due to my age, I need to start wearing glasses!! Most depressing

It's a 5 year old, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3GB ram and still running Leopard. Over the last year I've noticed a slow down in response when using applications and I'm wondering what my best course of action would be to give it a new lease of life as I don't want/can't afford to get a new one right now.

I've downloaded but not activated MacKeeper, the scan showed everything in the critical. I've not bought it yet as I would like to know if it's worth it. I guess another option would be to buy Snow Leopard and upgrade, but reading the reviews on Apples own web site puts me off that a bit (plus the back up, wipe and install from scratch sounds like a lot of work). I guess I could then upgrade to Lion, but again the reviews put me off and my Mac is the the lowest end of the spec for Lion so it may not perform the best.

What you you suggest?

Many Thanks

David

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jb052
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Re: Showing Signs of Age
« Reply #1 on Feb 7, 2012, 10:08pm »

On the last podcast Will was talking about an App called Broom which seems quite useful at cleaning up some of the remnants of old age.

But thinking about it, I'm not sure if you can get the Apps unless you are on a later OS

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Re: Showing Signs of Age
« Reply #2 on Feb 8, 2012, 1:09pm »

Onyx for Mac has it's uses.

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Re: Showing Signs of Age
« Reply #3 on Feb 8, 2012, 6:46pm »

I agree with Mr Cat. Running Onyx and cleaning your caches can make a big difference.

Another thing to do is to check your Fontbook. I don't know why fonts can cause so many problems but I've seen a machine speed back up a bit once I got rid of duplicated fonts etc.

For security updates I'd personally get on to Snow Leopard...but only if you're not going to give in to the temptation of a new machine that is!

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waylandd
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Re: Showing Signs of Age
« Reply #4 on Feb 11, 2012, 8:28pm »

big thanks to you all,

I have tried your suggestions. I can't get Broom as it's only on the app store, I tried two versions of Onynx, but both are compatible only with snow leopard, I also tried cocktail, which did have a leopard version but didn't seem to solve my issues. So I will bow to the inevitable, buy Snow Leopard and upgrade. So i may be back on to ask how to get my machine working again if some of the reviews I've read are true.
Cheers

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Re: Showing Signs of Age
« Reply #5 on Feb 12, 2012, 10:05am »

"if some of the reviews i read are true"…

I have had no issues at all with Snowy, even though I went with the very first release. I suspect many of the negative reviews may have been with that first release, or may have just been whinging about how small an upgrade it appeared to me.

Bottom line for me is that you can't possibly have any security on Leopard or any earlier OS as Apple have stopped issuing security updates for anything other that SL and Lion.

On BusyCal v Google… I just can't bring myself to trust Google and I just don't like web apps - it's a personal choice.

Anybody else out there have the same paranoia about the company that has the slogan "don't be evil"? I mean, if a character said that in the first 15 minutes of a movie you would just know they were the baddy!

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waylandd
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Re: Showing Signs of Age
« Reply #6 on Feb 20, 2012, 10:05am »

I have now ordered Snow Leopard online, for some reason it can't be bought in-store anymore, so as soon as it gets here it upgrade and let you know how I get on.....

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sjbuchanan007
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Re: Showing Signs of Age
« Reply #7 on Feb 20, 2012, 6:38pm »

I would still seriously consider the fresh install of Mac OSX.

I did prior to upgrading to Lion, never looked back

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waylandd
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Re: Showing Signs of Age
« Reply #8 on Feb 22, 2012, 10:11am »

Snow Leopard arrived yesterday, and less than 1 hour later I was upgraded and my machine was noticeably faster. To be honest I'm a bit embarrassed about my reluctance to upgrade sooner, I put it down to previous experience and pain from windows upgrades, I should have known I would get a better experience from Apple.

In the end I didn't do a clean install I just stuck in the disk (having checked I had a time machine back up), and let it do what it does. Perfect, Lion will be next.

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