Will upgrading to my old MacBook Pro from Mavericks to El Capitan speed things up? If not, how do I rollback?

Answering both posts.

Although you should be seeing some improvement in speed now I would not go on to El Capitan. Stay where you are. I think you are looking to be encouraged to replace this machine anyway, at which time El Capitan will be there to have.

Sometimes you cannot remove all of a file with whatever way you uninstall it. An Etre Check will still show traces of it and Easy Find will help you locate all those remaining bits for deletion. There is another useful app known as Find any File that some say offers better results.

Keep on removing as much of Google as you can.

Have you yet looked, using activity monitor, for processes that are slowing it down? If none are, your hunting is in vain.

Is the presumption that google apps were compatible with 10.10 but not 10.11, since som many people use them, i find that hard to believe.

Go back and read my post. You may nto like it, but i think its the real answer. While replacing your machine with a shiny new toy may be attractive, i can assure you its nto necessary.

Im typing this on one now. And it also runs engineering simulations. And other simulations in a windows virtual machine.

Battery: Health = Check Battery

I assume you are aware of that also.

The slowest component in your Mac is the HDD, thus it is the one capable of the most improvement.

Get an SSD.

I'm so pleased to read that. I rather hoped it would help things and looking at your memory usage, that has indeed improved. I'm prompted to say that you might want to run with things as they are for a while and see. Trusteer is well known to cause problems though I've never seen quite such a change.

As far as Easy Find is concerned, just play with it and see what it can do. The developer is very helpful, If I recall, he will respond to questions directly but you really only need it when you are positively looking to remove things.

Google isn't entirely bad news. (just 90%)

EyeGod wrote:

Hi John

Yes I am; hence my apprehension in regards to replacing my HDD with an SSD; if I do that, I might as well drop the cash on a new battery, and if I do that, I might just as well go and get a brand new MBP, cos why bother spending that much money on an ageing machine?

That is what I'm thinking also.

EyeGod:

So, you retrofitted your old MBP with a new SSD and it breathed new life into the unit?

Yes, but then, mine was never slow.

(I'd want a 500Gb unit; pricey!)

Not really, you can find them for $150 or so now. Make sure you enable TRIM with a 3rd party app liek TRIM enabler.

AND a new battery for such an old machine? Shouldn't I just take the plunge and get a new MBP altogether?

A new 15" MBP is like $2000, those parts are like $300. You do the math.

Anyhow, I'm checking Activity Monitor as I write this, and all I can see chowing resources under CPU is "usbmuxd" and "kernel_task";

The first is mysterious - google it. The second depends on what processes you are running. What task?

Under the Memory tab, it's much of the same.

No its not. It will show a color, compression level, and paging activity if any

I've seen a marked improvement after removing Rapport. Amazing.

not amazing at all. Lots of 3rd party utils are awful.

I agree with CSound and think you are not ding simple arithmetic.

But i'm sure a new machine will be shiny and nice.

FYI: here's a Samsung 500G SSD A good one) for < $130:

http://www.rakuten.com/prod/q/loc/101/277653942.html?&ranMID=36342&ranEAID=NKa3h ZyYoHA&ranSiteID=NKa3hZyYoHA-.Ba.UDKrNfyPB452kG5Lfg&scid=af_linkshare&adid=18094 &siteID=NKa3hZyYoHA-.Ba.UDKrNfyPB452kG5Lfg

so no, its not a ;lot of money compared to a new laptop