Sometimes having to trade your Mac for a new one when the system slows down just isn’t the right path to take. You may have to upgrade you Mac instead regardless of what people say that Macs are notoriously hard to upgrade. It can be done.
It is generally agreed that having more RAM in your machine translates to more processor speed. this is right and the simplest way of having to improve the performance of your Mac. RAM should be the first thing you think of when you want a system upgrade.
For a RAM upgrade however, it is mandatory that you first know the type of RAM that your system operates on. Finding out this piece of information would take no time at all. All you need to do is click on the apple that is on the top left of the screen then select “About this Mac”. This is where you get the crucial info regarding your RAM specifications.
The RAM specifications you also need to be conversant with are how much more RAM would your system need. This is because the impact of any additional RAM would depend on the type of tasks your machine carries out. In some instances, a Mac would do with as much RAM as you are able to add to it while in other instances it would do just fine with the specified RAM configurations.
When you have had all the data on the RAM you need the next step would simply involve going out to acquire the sticks of the specific RAM for installation into your system. Once acquired all you would need to do would be to install them into your system.
To install the additional RAM into your system is a very straightforward process, making sure that the machine is switched off open up the system to reveal RAM slots then plug in the RAM sticks. However if you are not confident enough on how to open up the system, there are plenty of tutorial videos and some could be made for hw to go about opening your Mac model.
After that installation, you will sure notice the enormous speed enhancement for your system. Every task will now be performed at a snap. The applications that previously couldn’t be installed, you will now be able to enjoy what they have to offer.
However, the random access memory is not the only thing that determines the performance of a Mac. Other components of an OS such as the CPU, graphics and storage also influence the level of performance.
The Hard Drive to (SSD) Solid State Drivers
Having to change to a solid state driver is one of the best upgrade decisions one would make to a Mac. This drive has very high speeds that would incidentally instigate the faster launching of your computer software and speed up the booting process too. The MacBook Air models come with an already built SSD that you would be able to improve to more space pretty easily too. Other Mac models can indeed do with an SSD upgrade.
To carry out the SSD upgrade you would need to have a solid state drive with sufficient space to carry the current date that is on your hard drive that you want to replace and still have plenty of free space left for the tasks you would need to perform after the upgrade.
Once you acquire the SSD that best suits you, you would have to format it before you attempt anything with it. Once formatted, you have got to clone the hard disk drive to the formatted solid state drive. The cloning can be achieved by the use of cloning software. The software will clone all the data from one drive to the other (hard drive to SSD).
When both drives are full cloned, you will need to open the Mac to install the SSD as the new/main drive now. Again if you are not sure how to go about the installation, you tube videos for your kind of model will come in handy to guide you through it. The advantages would include the massive speed gains and performances and increased boot speed and way better read and write speeds.
Upgrading elsewhere
Installing a new operating system: if the current OS X just isn’t working for you, the effortless way to take charge of your Mac’s capabilities would be to fix in a Windows OS, Linux or just endeavor to do with both of them, this will result in a performance boost, though it may not seem like much
Get better software: One of the biggest disadvantages when it comes to Macs is that Apple apparently gives up on sustaining them at the end of a four or five year time period. This would imply that the existing operating system may not work, and Apple’s software support will dawdle to a halt. That’s actually not a bad thing. Much Older software are usually cheaper (for instance, getting a copy of Photoshop CS 4 as an alternative to CS 6), and a astounding number of some apps that are commonly in use are compatible with older operating systems. Substituting some of the boring default Mac software would be a great place to start.
Clean it up: Laptops and desktops do get extremely dirty over some time, and while you may not see an enormous increase in the performance, a dusting the Mac from the inside out will surely help it run more smoothly (and maybe yet, better).
Get the latest external hardware: Your experience using a computer need be much more than just following your inside guts. It’s also about what you go by means of in the physical world. If you’re still stuck to using the same old mouse and keyboard that came with your Mac, then getting a new hardware addition such as the perfect mouse and keyboard or even speakers would be an inexpensive upgrade that makes a whole lot of difference.
