Okay so bought a MBA off ebay and sent it in to apple and they repaired a few things to make it 100% functional. I got it today and I was using skype and I am really glitchey, and watching videos on mtv they are really slow. So my question is how do I boost the performance and can I send my MBA into apple so they can upgrade the ram to 4gb since the MBA ram is not user upgradeable?
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Macbook air is....SLOW!!!!
- Thread starter barkjohn10
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No, Apple will not upgrade the RAM, as it is soldered onto the logic board.
Also have a look at Activity Monitor (Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.
image below uses sorting by CPU as an example
Also have a look at Activity Monitor (Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.
image below uses sorting by CPU as an example
I'm guessing the culprit is having only 2GB of RAM. To verify this, look at the System Memory tab of Activity Monitor and check your "page outs" and "swap used". If they're high, you're maxing out your RAM.
Did you read my post? It tells you how. If you're maxing out your RAM, you either need to reduce your workload demands or get a new Mac with more RAM, better suited to your needs.
Well I looked at the system memory and it say I have 1.13gb free. So........I am not maxing my ram out, what else could it be??? Do I have a virus???
Please re-read my first post. I told you exactly what to look for.
There has never been a virus in the wild that runs on Mac OS X. The handful of trojans that exist can be easily avoided with some education and common sense and care in what software you install. Read the link simsaladimbamba posted.
If that represents normal use for you, you're not fully using the RAM you have.Here ya GOOO!!!)
Well so are all MBA's just slow??? My ibook g4 was performed better than my MBA!!!( AND YES IT IS THE FIRST MACBOOK AIR WITH A HARD DRIVE, COULD UPGRADING IT TO A SSD MAKE SKYPE AND OTHER THINGS THAT REQUIRE FLASH?
( AND YES IT IS THE FIRST MACBOOK AIR WITH A HARD DRIVE, COULD UPGRADING IT TO A SSD MAKE SKYPE AND OTHER THINGS THAT REQUIRE FLASH?
Well so are all MBA's just slow??? My ibook g4 was performed better than my MBA!!!
What MBA do you have then?
And have you watched the CPU usage during one of the activities (Skype and MTV watching - is there even any music on this channel?) you mentioned in your first post?
You have plenty of RAM free. That does not appear to be the issue. Please give us some more information and we may be able to help. For instance, which computer did you use previously? If you came from a Core i7 with 8GB RAM, for instance, then yes, the MacBook Air will seem "slow" by comparison.
Is it "beachballing"? Are videos slow? Skype is notoriously slow on Macs. Make sure you are using the most recent version. If your MTV videos are on Flash, download the most recent version of Flash (10.2) as it supports hardware acceleration to your GPU for videos that are encoded to take advantage of it. If you haven't updated to Firefox 4.0, do so, since it also takes advantage of hardware acceleration.
Is it "beachballing"? Are videos slow? Skype is notoriously slow on Macs. Make sure you are using the most recent version. If your MTV videos are on Flash, download the most recent version of Flash (10.2) as it supports hardware acceleration to your GPU for videos that are encoded to take advantage of it. If you haven't updated to Firefox 4.0, do so, since it also takes advantage of hardware acceleration.
Something else that occurred to me if you bought it off eBay is that the old owner might have run Erase Free Space on Disk Utility before selling it to you. If he did, that will slow down the SSD quite a bit. The only solution I am aware of (if you are running OS X 10.6.7) is to install the TRIM Support Enabler hack that's mentioned in the Mac Pro forums and clean out the drive. Do a MRoogle or perhaps I can find the link to describe how that is done.
And have you watched the CPU usage during one of the activities (Skype and MTV watching - is there even any music on this channel?) you mentioned in your first post?
No I don't have a SSD I thought about buying one off ebay to speed performance up, and when I bought it off ebay and it had a broken hinge and a bad hard drive and when I sent it in to apple to repair the hinge and I was going to replace the hard drive, but when I got it back in the mail it said on the paper that they replaced the hard drive with a new one and put a clean install of osx on it.
Here is a screen snapshot of system memory while watching a tv show on mtv!
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the HDD's in the Macbook air's are very slow. you don't have a ram issue, an SSD should sort you out nicely.
check which you get through, I have a feeling the MBA's use a micro HD form factor.
My fault the new model cost a thousand and its the crappy one that's 11", I am HAPPY with mine even though its slow but the backlit keyboard does come in handy)
Yeh the MBA's use the same kind of hard drive used in a ipod classic!
)Yeh the MBA's use the same kind of hard drive used in a ipod classic!
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Which model of the MBA do you have? If it is the old one (2009 model) then you would expect some issues with speed, my new 2010 MBA is very fast indeed. The old one consists of a mechanical 1.8" HDD, which are way slower than flash memory on the new models.
I would advise you to get it checked again with Apple to make sure that all is fine with the machine.
I would advise you to get it checked again with Apple to make sure that all is fine with the machine.
So Apple updated the Air in 2009, the old model really sucks compared with the new one