RAM upgrade

[DaveS]

I have a MacBookPro with has 8 GB of RAM. It's a non-retina model, so is supposedly capable of having more RAM. My question is whether it will make any difference. It seems very sluggish recently. Sometimes Mail messages take 10 sec or more to open (or don't at all) and text messages are also slow to respond. The hard drive is less than half full. Since it's pretty old (though I got it new in 2015--old stock) I don't want to put a lot of money into it. I expect a SSD would make it faster, but that's $$, too.

Comments?

Dave

 

[TimRichards]

I got a mid-2015 MBP in 2016 (because i didn't want to loose the SD slot etc. of the 'new' one at the time). I do have a SSD and 16 GB of Ram, but I must say the performance is just fine. In my experience a notable slowdown is sometime related to a software upgrade.

 

[chas_m]

8GB of RAM should not cause the issues you are describing unless:

A. You’re keeping a ton of stuff on your desktop, or
B. You have a lot of programs open (or a browser with a lot of tabs open) that haven’t actually been “quit.”

To me, it sounds like that hard drive is getting old and may be in danger of failing. Make sure you’re back ups are up-to-date, and if that hard drive is the same one that originally came with that machine — I’d strongly recommend replacing it.

 

[DaveS]

Thanks for the replies. I'll try to do some clean-up.

Dave