Speeding up older Macs

[PaBear]

Apart from my MacBook Pro (2016), I use a mid-2011 i-Mac (High Sierra 10.13.6) and a white 2009 MacBook (Sierra 10.12.6). Neither can take any more OS updates and both are slow in reacting to almost all inputs, keyboard & Magic Mouse.

I run ONYX (to suit each version of the OS) and Norton (Scan plus all the usual add-ons) on both. Back-ups to Time Capsule.

Is there a general, or specific, way to boost their respective speeds?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

There isn't much more to do to speed them up. You can add RAM, but that won;t generally speed things up...you would notice slightly better performance if you run multiple apps simultaneously. Replaceing a standard HDD with an SSD would produce a noticeable speed increase.

Also, you could try disabling Norton, as real-time/on-access antivirus scanning can really slow your Mac down to a crawl.

How much free space do they have on their drives?

C

 

[PaBear]

Hello,

There isn't much more to do to speed them up. You can add RAM, but that won;t generally speed things up...you would notice slightly better performance if you run multiple apps simultaneously. Replaceing a standard HDD with an SSD would produce a noticeable speed increase.

Also, you could try disabling Norton, as real-time/on-access antivirus scanning can really slow your Mac down to a crawl.

How much free space do they have on their drives?

C

Hello,

There isn't much more to do to speed them up. You can add RAM, but that won;t generally speed things up...you would notice slightly better performance if you run multiple apps simultaneously. Replaceing a standard HDD with an SSD would produce a noticeable speed increase.

Also, you could try disabling Norton, as real-time/on-access antivirus scanning can really slow your Mac down to a crawl.

How much free space do they have on their drives?

C

Thank you, Cory.

To concentrate on my 2011 i-Mac, there is 12Gb memory and about half of the 500Gb storage available.

As to Norton, I suppose I am always worried by 'invaders' so I keep that running with auto updates.

Could I do something with the start up routine?

The 2009 MacBook was running all weekend but still seemed very sluggish. I have parked it for now.