Caporegime
What else do you have open at the same time and what are you doing in windows at the time.
Why is my MacBook Pro so slow?
- Thread starter ChrisD.
- Start date
What else do you have open at the same time and what are you doing in windows at the time.
But he's on about 2011 MacBooks...
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Jun 2010
- Posts
- 3,251
I would suspect the HDD. Get a SSD in their asap 
Though the clunky issue you describe sounds like there are bigger problems. Have you asked in an Apple shop?
Though the clunky issue you describe sounds like there are bigger problems. Have you asked in an Apple shop?
Having used computers since the early days, old habits die hard. I tend therefore to only ever have one thing running at once e.g. if I'm using Word then I shut down everything else. It was the only way one could run things in the old days and it has stuck with me. To be honest I prefer it that way as let's face it you can't really be writing a report whilst watching TV on catchup at the same time.
I'd blame the HDD too. I find the 5400rpm HDD in my MBP to be pretty awful even when just doing everyday tasks. It completely kills the performance of what's otherwise a fairly fast machine. Why they couldn't cough up the extra £10 for a 7200rpm HDD in a £1,000 laptop I don't know.
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As others have posted, an SSD would make a fantastic boost to performance.
I have a 500gb 5400rpm drive in my macbook pro 2010 and it can be slow to read. But once the programs are loaded its insanely quick.
2010 Macbook Pro 15"
2.66Ghz i7 - Turbo boost to 3.33Ghz
8gb Ram 1066mhz
GeForce 330m 512mb
Hi-Res Anti Glare screen
Running OSX Lion.
I have a 500gb 5400rpm drive in my macbook pro 2010 and it can be slow to read. But once the programs are loaded its insanely quick.
2010 Macbook Pro 15"
2.66Ghz i7 - Turbo boost to 3.33Ghz
8gb Ram 1066mhz
GeForce 330m 512mb
Hi-Res Anti Glare screen
Running OSX Lion.
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I've had a similar issue with my macbook with 4GB RAM when runnign VirtualBox Win7 64Bit machine with 1GB assigned to it. Activity monitor showed it using 100% CPU almost constantly. Changed VM settings to have a 60% CPU Execution Cap and it runs great now without interfering with everything else running on the Mac.
OP, you do kind of fail to mention which version of Parallels it is you are using. From what I've seen in reviews, the latest version of Parallels (v7) has become a lot more stable and tends to be the recommended VM tool over VMWare for Lion.
Could it be that an upgrade to the latest version of Parallels can resolve your issue (a cost is involved of course, but cheaper than shelling out for an SSD)
Could it be that an upgrade to the latest version of Parallels can resolve your issue (a cost is involved of course, but cheaper than shelling out for an SSD)
A lot more stable than what? I've run version 6 exclusively on a Lion iMac using W7 since day one and never had even a hint of a wobble.
When Lion first came out Coherance mode in V6 would use up 100% of CPU but it was fixed by a patch/update quite quickly.
I've just done the hardware test and it all passed.
Odd as I had 3 beeps on startup the other day, and it took a bit for it to turn on, which seems to suggest a memory bank problem?
I'm half tempted to buy a 256GB Crucial M4 to replace the 128GB one I have in the desktop and put it into the Mac.
Odd as I had 3 beeps on startup the other day, and it took a bit for it to turn on, which seems to suggest a memory bank problem?
I'm half tempted to buy a 256GB Crucial M4 to replace the 128GB one I have in the desktop and put it into the Mac.
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Soldato
That's exactly what I've just done with my macpro and macbookpro and its made a massive improvement in the speed of everything on the mbp.
Okay I've ordered the 256GB Crucial M4, so I intend on putting the 128GB one into the Mac.
How do I do this, not in terms of fitting, but in terms of getting OSX up and running on the SSD?
From my limited Apple knowledge, my train of thought leads me to suggest backing up using Time machine to a USB drive or network location, then fit the new drive, boot into recovery mode, and restore from that backup?
Are there any specific SSD settings I will have to fine tune once I'm up and running again?
How do I do this, not in terms of fitting, but in terms of getting OSX up and running on the SSD?
From my limited Apple knowledge, my train of thought leads me to suggest backing up using Time machine to a USB drive or network location, then fit the new drive, boot into recovery mode, and restore from that backup?
Are there any specific SSD settings I will have to fine tune once I'm up and running again?
That's pretty much what I'd be doing. The only tweak once you're up and running might be to enable TRIM - Apple only normally enables it for sanctioned SSDs: http://www.storagereview.com/how_enable_trim_nonapple_ssd
Could well be the drive, I use a mid 2010 Core i5 MBP with 8GB of memory and use the Windows VM as my main working platform running Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server neither of which are particularly resource-light apps. Difference is that I replaced the stock 5200 drive with a 7200 Momentus XT drive with solid state cache.
I allocate Win7 2 of the 4 cores and 2.2GB ram and it runs just the same as Windows running natively, you wouldn't know it was a VM!
In fact, I wrote a blog post on how good it was as a dev platform: http://www.d2computing.co.uk/index.php/is-parallels-viable-for-use-in-day-to-day-development/
NOTE - when I swapped my drive over, I ended up doing a full re-install as CCC no longer works on Lion with Bootcamp, there is a 'tweaked' version but I didn't bother trying as read of to many failures using it. I simply re-ran the Lion installer and restored from Time Machine and job was a goodun'.
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