[Hidden-tech] little rant about OSX

[Zach Fried, LPP LLC]

I agree with what Steve and Chris have mentioned about solid state drives.
If the computer is short on memory (RAM; not to be confused with storage
space) then it will use the startup drive as virtual memory, which will
noticeably slow things down. However when the startup drive is an SSD, the
decrease is not nearly as noticeable, if at all.

One more thing to add: you always want about 10 GB and preferably more than
15 GB of free space on the startup drive. Think of this as breathing room
for temporary system files.

SSDs have been promising upgrades for a few years but as a complete
solution they were prohibitively expensive for the average client; finally
that is changing — now it's the most common upgrade I do.

Best,
Zach

--

*Zach Fried*

*Local Prosperity Partners, LLC*

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zach at localprosper.com

Office: (413) 461-0617

On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 8:21 PM, Steven Aronstein <saronstein at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
>
>
> In my experience both SSD and RAM are vast (and often critical)
> improvements.
>
> There's no question that maxing out your RAM is often necessary if you run
> enough apps, and that too little RAM can mean a computer will barely
> function. Just time passing while you own a computer means updated apps,
> higher bandwidth activities, and the general proliferation of data and
> communication are going to increase your RAM needs even if you don't
> upgrade the OS.
>
> And hard drives are not only painfully slow (and terribly unreliable -- I
> finally replaced every HDD I could afford to with SSDs after my 4th or 5th
> hard drive corruption; the money was better spent keeping all my data AND
> having faster performance than spending on data recovery services) but
> since they are so unreliable and prone to degradation, it's likely some
> performance issues will occur above and beyond inherent slowness because
> the hard drive is corrupted or dying.  Regardless, it's hard to marginalize
> the performance improvement when a computer goes from taking 1-2 minutes to
> boot with a hard drive to 15 seconds with an SSD -- just as an example.
>
> Basically, you can barely run a computer if it needs more RAM; and if
> you're waiting forever to load or save programs or files and you hear the
> hard drive working a lot -- an SSD will be a huge improvement.
>
>
>
> The thing is, RAM is really cheap now.  Most Macs can max out their RAM
> for $100 or less.
>
> And SSDs are almost the same price as hard drives now as well --
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3011199/storage/plummeting-ssd-prices-are-quickly-closing-in-on-traditional-hard-drives.html
>
>
>
> And if your hard drive is dying or badly damaged, you'll need to replace
> it immediately anyway -- and it makes almost no sense to buy a hard drive
> anymore when you do that.  If you want to test that, you can run Disk
> Utility and look for red warnings about node damage; or even better run
> Prosoft Engineering Drive Genius, Micromat Tech Tool, or Micromat Checkmate
> -- to check for bad blocks.
>
> You can find out how maxed out your RAM usage is by looking at the
> Activity Monitor app Apple includes on all Macs; or my preference is
> running the much easier to understand free Memory Clean app -- it will show
> you how much RAM you are using and how much is left, constantly in the menu
> bar while you are using your computer.
>
>
>
> I have taken old slow Macs and (1) increased the RAM; (2) then repaired
> the hard drive and rebuilt its directories with Disk Warrior and copied
> that over onto a newly installed SSD.  The performance improvements have
> often been greater than what one could afford to pay for a fancier newer
> Mac.
>
> Spending around $300 on these two things can basically give you a new
> computer, so clearly my vote is for both RAM and SSD if you can afford it.
>
> -Steve
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Chris Hart, MyMacTech.com <
> chris at chrishart.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Unquestionably, with the kind of multi-app usage that's been talked
>> about, more RAM is called for.  But more RAM alone won't work miracles.
>>
>> In my experience, SSD makes a much bigger difference in system
>> performance -- even if the system is short on RAM.
>>
>> *Chris Hart*
>>     * Computer Support & Technology Consulting*
>> *        for Connecticut and Western Massachusetts*
>> *            Tel: 860-291-9393 <860-291-9393>*
>> *                chris at chrishart.net <chris at chrishart.net>*
>> *                    http://www.MyMacTech.com <http://www.mymactech.com>*
>>
>>
>>
>> Sounds to me like insufficient RAM. Every program takes memory. SSDs
>> speed up boot time, and file access, but that's not what your computer
>> spends most of its time doing. Buy more memory.
>>
>> Dan
>>
>>
>>
>>
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