MBP crawls (!) with SL - should I address before or after upgrade?

[dmaxdmax]

CORRECTION - I am currently running Lion!

I have a mid-late '07 MBP (4 gig RAM - 2.4 mHz) and it is slow. How slow? It takes ages to open mail, has long lags switching apps and changing users takes so long I've stopped doing it. If safari is open, especially with a lot of tabs, I'll close it and it helps a little.

I have a ton of HD space and am not running heavy duty apps. It's slow from the very beginning after start-up. It's been a problem for a few years and OSes and I've always chalked it up to age but now I'm not sure.

Is this something I should try to address now or does it make sense to upgrade first and tackle it then?

Thanks

 

[thefredelement]

You might want to try a clean install with that, if it's that sluggish at login without anything open, like say, when you first open safari, it could be a sign of a deeper problem.

Have you tried to run a hardware test or monitor your resources?

 

[Woodcrest64]

How big is your hard drive and how much space do you have left? If your hard drive is 50% full you're going to see some slow down. If its 75% or more you can notice some serious slow down.

You have a few options if the above is true.

1.) Get a larger hard drive
2.) Backup all your data onto an external drive and reinstall Lion with just your apps, nothing else
3.) By a SSD and put it into your Mac.
4.) By a new computer if the first three options are not ideal for you.

 

[nikhsub1]

Sounds like a bad hard drive.

 

[dmaxdmax]

I'm on my iPad now but iirc there is about 200 gig free out of 500 total.

Is there an app for testing a hard drive?

 

[dmaxdmax]

I downloaded and am running Blackmagic Disk Speed Test but am not sure what to look for. The UI isn't super helpful. I'm seeing read and write speeds in the 60-75 MB/s range and the "speedometer" suggests that's pretty slow but I don't know if that means slow compared to a solid state drive and normal for a hard disk.

What should I be seeing?