The truth is for those of us that are Mac users our computers are most definitely an investment. When shopping for a Mac you can definitely experience a bit of sticker shock. Most of the calls that we receive regarding older Mac computers are that they are slow and the performance has significantly decreased.
The main question usually is “Do I Upgrade My Mac Now or Should I Replace it?” The good news is, if you have an older Mac you may not need to replace it yet.
3 Things You Can Do to Increase the Performance of an Older Mac Computer
Max the Memory. One of the lease expensive computer upgrades you can do is to add memory. If you find that your Mac is running sluggish check the memory capacity of your system a Memory Upgrade may just do the trick!
Upgrade the Operating System. Check to see if your computer operating system can be upgraded. If you are on an older Operating System such as El Capitain you may want to consider upgrading to High Sierra. High Sierra has an upgraded user interface and has some great new features that previous versions did not. Features such as unlocking your Mac with your Apple Watch or the Universal Clipboard that allows you to cut and paste across multiple devices and our personal favorite the syncing of your desktop and documents across all your Macs. If you work from home that document now will be accessible at work even if you had forgotten to save it in a shared folder.
Replace the Hard Drive with a Solid State Drive. This one upgrade will be worth its weight in gold. On average, an SSD is 100 times faster than a traditional hard drive. Your computer will boot up in seconds as opposed to several minutes. There will be virtually no waiting for anything that you need to do on that machine.
You can save yourself a ton of money by simply upgrading your Mac instead of completely replacing it. Unfortunately, the newer models coming on the market appear to have the SSD soldered directly into the logic board which means you will never be able to upgrade those models. For those of us with older Mac’s perfoming an upgrade is a viable solution to take us well into the future with a solid computer.
Mac Computers are great machines, so why wouldn’t you do everything you can to extend the life of your investment.
If you have any questions or concerns at all it is always best to take your computer to a reputable, local computer shop for their advice on whether your Mac is a good candidate for an upgrade and how best to proceed.
