Should I buy a new Mac? (And what’s wrong with my old one?)
My laptop is a few years old, and running slowly. You suggest upgrading memory to speed a Mac up. Am I better off purchasing a completely new one rather than simply upgrading this one?
A Mac should last at least 3 years, the length of the extended AppleCare agreement. After AppleCare expires, you will have to pay for repairs. On a laptop, unless you’re skilled or intrepid, this is going to include parts and labor. Let’s ballpark the average likely repair — from a $200 hard drive to a $900 logic board — at $550.
Now, you can find a good, slightly used Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook on Craigslist for as little as $600. I used not to recommend that people buy used Macs, but the Core 2 Duos are just fantastic machines, and any one that can be upgraded to 4GB RAM is good enough for me or for almost any of my clients (the ones who don’t do serious graphics or multimedia production). If you do opt for a second-hand Mac, please make sure it is either covered by AppleCare or eligible for it, being younger than a year since original purchase date.
That said, I still place a lot of value in buying a new Mac, or one of Apple’s great refurb units.
When should I buy a new Mac?
My standard spiel (which usually starts with the words “my standard spiel”) is this:
After 3 years, you should have a new computer in your budget. After four years, be ready and willing to lay down some jack for a Mac. After five years, your Mac is past its prime, and will not be up to whatever awesome software Apple and other developer/magicians will have concocted.
Is it likely that a simple memory upgrade will solve my speed problem …
Yes, but depending on the model, a G4 Mac can, at most, go up to 2GB RAM, which is too little for modern computing.
… or would you expect others issues to be involved?
Dunno, but Activity Monitor was an excellent place for you to have started. Rather than interpreting your report of what you found there, I’m going to recommend that you take some time to examine Activity Monitor further. Read the Help documents. Click through all the tabs. Show > “All Processes”. Sort by each of the columns.
Next, try rebooting your Mac, and then open Activity Monitor afresh. See what it tells you right after a boot. You might even try logging in as a different user (I always create a second administrative user account, just in case) and checking out the activity.
Maintaining OS X, generally
You have suggested performing a few maintenance operations that may improve speed. What would they be? Are they simple to perform?
Mac OS X actually does a lot of maintenance for you in the background. There are a few symptoms that require application of some basic clean-up, which can be done in the Terminal, or with a simple tool such as Maintenance (the same developer also makes the more robust OnyX, and there are several other similar packages, including Cocktail, Macaroni, Leopard Cache Cleaner, et al. The only times we have to use things like DiskWarrior, TechTool, or the like are when the Mac is barely functioning.
Switched to BusySync
Calgoo wasn’t cutting it. Failed once, and didn’t have a mechanism to kickstart it. I’ve been hearing about BusySync’s Google Calendar-syncing goodness for a while, and the reports are borne out: BusySync has low impact on my MacBook’s resources. It’s fast. And it makes nice two-way roads between iCal and Gcal.
I know it does other stuff, but I don’t care about those things right now.
Now, please, Apple: CalDAV on iPhone. Seriously.
Scheduling happens!
Welcome 2009, and welcome to Phase 1 of J2v2!
I’m so very pleased to announce a new appointment-making system up here at J2 HQ. As ofthis Tuesday,Lynn Gosnell has assumed the post of scheduling coordinator. It’s pretty cool that, with some of the amazing web services that have come out in the last couple of years, Lynn — a die-hard Mac fan, as well as writer and editor — can do this from pretty much anywhere — or at least from any internet connection.
Lynn has already made it possible to respond to client inquiries much more quickly than I could by myself. And I have enjoyed putting the mechanisms together to make a complete system. They run something like this:
First of all, GrandCentral (note: see Update below) gives us a permanent phone number (210.787.2709 for your scheduling pleasure). When Lynn wants to take point, she just signs into GrandCentral and points the service at her phone number, and then all calls will go to her. You can even point it at multiple phones, and it will ring in both places simultaneously. We can do custom greetings, custom ringing, spam archiving and blocking… the features are phenomenal.
And guess what? GrandCentral is free! They started out a couple of years ago, got some good press from people like David Pogue, and then the dream of every modern web startup came true: Google bought ‘em.
Yet, while phone is a crucial piece of this puzzle, I think we would all agree that voice calls can take time — valuable time — to accomplish decisions that can be made much more efficiently. To that end, email has become the de facto preference for many of us, and text messaging (SMS) works well for others.
What if we could combine email, a collaborative calendar, and shared documents? Enter Google Apps. With 7+ GB storage per user, built-in IMAP support (a requisite for email on the iPhone), and super-easy asset sharing within one’s domain (e.g. j2mac.com) — and, yes, it’s free — Google has built a digital oasis where once was a desert. I have been floored with how well Google Apps has integrated into my business and into the organizations of our many clients who now benefit from this service.
In Google Calendar, the three of us can add to our respective calendars with ease. Lynn can manage mine and Erick’s calendars. We can each keep personal calendars whose event details are hidden from the others, though the “free/busy” information is available. And I can embed our layered calendars onto this siteso clients can see our upcoming availability. I like that someone can send us an appointment request such as “Ted Stevens, retrieve deleted emails, Thursday, 1pm-4pm” and we can copy and paste that into Google Calendar’s Quick Add field. How sweet it is!
We’re starting to use Google Docs to keep a history of our work for each client. We can see these docs on our iPhones, and anyone is welcome to ask us for a link to their J2 document.
Finally, a more new-fangled service called Yammer has enabled the three of us to message the others in a running narrative. Yammer is based on the idea of Twitter; both are geared toward short messages, and rely heavily on text messaging for posting and receiving updates. This is, for me, an important substitute for email, which is too cumbersome for quick updates while on the go. Yammer’s cost? You know it: $0.
Again, this whole on-the-go, location-agnostic way of working was not possible two or three years ago, certainly not with the minimal effort and expenditure we have spent this last week.
Phase 2 is a new look, comin’ your way shortly.
Update: Lynn Gosnell has decided to pursue other projects, so we will have a new scheduling coordinator soon. Also, GrandCentral is no longer subscribing new members.
