mac help needed

[zaraband]

Does anyone know of a good mac doctor? I have an old Mac power pc OS X 10.4.11, I know!!! and need to know if more RAM can be installed to make it faster?

[DulwichFox]

Adding more RAM may or may not speed up your Mac.

It depends on what you use your computer for. Unless you play a lot of memory hogging games

you are not likely to see a great increase in performance or speed by adding more RAM.

Of course, it's good to have more RAM but may not be worth the added expense.

DulwichFox

[zaraband]

Hi DF

Thanks for your reply. I use it purely for design matters, so no games or video. I am producing work from a number of images from my camera all of which are around 7mb original size. I then manipulate, omit background, clean up etc and its getting unbearably slower with each image! what can I do?

James

[DulwichFox]

Hi James..

I'm a Windows man myself. There are many people here on EDF better qualified than myself on Mac matters.

I'm sure someone else will pick up on this soon. Probably watching the Cup Final at the moment.

DulwichFox

[gbal30]

Hi James,

Forget the talk about gaming - while games can use up RAM, plenty of other applications can also use a fair chunk of it, particularly design apps. By today's standards, 7mb per image is not very big and shouldn't cause most systems any problem at all, however it does sound like your mac might be suffering with age.

In short, yes more RAM should speed up activities like you describe - as long as your computer will support it (there is usually an upper limit on type/speed and quantity of RAM). Pound for pound adding more RAM generally gives a decent performance increase in relationship to cost, over other upgrades. This does depend on exact usage of course.

Whether or not you can add any more depends on the exact model/spec of your mac - if you can narrow it down here, the results should help show you what is available for your system http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/memory-info

Also FYI when working with images and applying effects, multiple layers etc - save your work regularly, this reduces the strain on RAM by recording the data to a permanent file rather than it being stored temporarily in RAM - which may be causing the sluggishness as it fills up.

Hope this helps.

[zaraband]

Hi

Thanks very much for your help, great advice, specially on saving regularly!

[shuntman]

Chris Hill-Essex is the guy you want to speak with.

07956288958

www.puremacintosh.com

Local guy, very friendly and knowledgeable.