Drewsey_woosey wrote:
I recently purchased a new MacBook Pro (2.6 Ghz Intel Core i7, 8 GB 1600 Mhz DDR3) and gave my old one to my daughter. I used Time Machine to basically produce an exact copy of the old machine; however, in the six weeks I've been using it, I don't seem to see any improvements in speed eg programmes which took several seconds to open still take several seconds to open (I know - learn to be a bit more patient!).
Is there a simple way of comparing two machines? Are there any ways the general public can "benchmark" different computers to allow a direct comparison?
You might have gotten a newer machine, which is surely faster performing on the hardware side if you run GeekBench, XBench and other tests for CPU, Graphics and UI responses.
However some hardware speeds haven't changed too much, like hard drives which Apple places pokey 5,400 RPM drives in their laptop because it's more stable and takes less power.
Apple likes to add features to OS X to sell more hardware, this "bloat" tends to eat away at the hardware performance you do get when you buy a new machine.
Apple very well can make the UI feel more snappy, however they put speed limits in as they want people to be able to recognize something is happening.
Another factor is you restored from TimeMachine, which doesn't really optimize the hard drive when it restores back.
Another factor is a lot of hard drives come from the factor with bad sectors, which takes time for the drive to discover and map off, this affects read performance.
Another factor is perhaps you bought a 13" MBP, with no dedicated graphics card, so it's running on the Intel CPU 4000 graphics which is greatly inferior to the higher end 15" dedicated graphics.
Another factor is when you restored from TimeMachine your personal data pushed past the 50% mark on your boot hard drive, these sectors and tracks on the hard drive are shorter and further inwards thus it takes longer for the read heads to get data from them.
I don't have to recommned any program for you to test your new hardware against the old one, I know your new machine is probablly faster.
What I suspect has occured is your machine either doesn't have a dedicated video card (a 13", cant' help about that)
or that your running 10.7 (you CAN upgrade to 10.8 which reports are it's a bit snappier)
Does your Mac qualify for free 10.8 upgrade?
I suspect you dont't have a SSD or else you wouldn't be complaining, so that leaves a boot hard drive over 50% filled and/or a deoptimized TimeMachine restore.
What you can do is get a blank, powered external drive and a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner
1: Reduce the content of your boot drive user data so Acitivty Monitor > Disk Usage is below 50% (never more than 80% filled) reboot to see the changes.
2: Use CCC to clone the Macintosh HD partition to the external drive, hold the option key down while booting and boot off the clone drive.
3: Use Disk Utility (on the clone) to select your Macintosh HD partiton on the internal drive, use the Erase > Secure Erase middle selection and wait, this will "zero" the drive and ehen it checks, will map off any bad or failing sectors.
4: When that's completed (takes a few hours) then use CCC to clone the clone back onto the Macintosh HD partition.
5: Reboot and Disk Utility > Repair permissions on both drives, use OnyX from MacUpdate.com to run all the maintainence and cleaning aspects and reboot.
For the OnyX routine, see #12 here: Step by Step to fix your Mac
What you should wind up with is a as snappy machine as possible, your Applications will be written to the "hot band" which is the fastest portion of the hard drive, hopefully any bad sectors which take longer to read from will be eliminated.
If you want to make hardware changes, I recommned getting a Solid State Drive for faster speed, however they can't be securely erased and Filevault has been cracked so that's no protection.
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/
FYI I have a pokey 5,400 RPM drive, butI used the optimization techniques above and it's dam well snappy. I also run 10.6.8 on a Early 2011, which is the last machines that can run 10.6., so because the OS is less bloated I get more UI response.
Other factos I have, I have a 25 Mb/p download Internet speed and a 5Ghz WPA2(AES) ruoter with no leachers or other users. I use Firefox with the broadband tweaks which is even faster than Safari which is the fasest browser on Macs. My web pages lad in about 1-2 seconds onaverage.
