You can just clone your old hard disk to the SSD and things will still improve, but if you can bear the hassle of combining it with a clean install, youll get such a fast machine you wont recognize it.

Unlike with our stupid, weak-willed bodies, though, we dont have to accept our Macs slowing down and eventual obsolescence as a crashing inevitability.

There is a lot you can do to breathe new life into your aging computer to extend its useful life, and though some cost moneyalbeit vastly less money than it would take to buy a new Macmany are free.

This isnt about those wacky, cutesy projects to turn your iMac G3 into a fish tank or a Cube into a tissue dispenser, and nor is it about celebrating the zen of using an old, slow Mac thats cut off from the Internet as a distraction-free writing tool, though theres nothing wrong with any of that.

What follows is tried-and-tested pragmatic advice to keep your Mac happily and gainfully employed for many years to come.

Like a doctor, you need to understand why your Mac is sluggish before blundering in with treatments.

So your first diagnostic step is to launch Activity Monitor (ApplicationsUtilities) and see where the pinch points are.

This will show you what applications are demanding the most from your main processor (CPU); click the CPU column header to sort by this, and ensure youve selected All Processes from the View menu.

If you dont recognize a process, Google it; it might be a background app thats run rogue.

Activity Monitor will also show you pressure on your memory (RAM).

If youre trying to run many, complex apps at once, your Mac might struggle.

Start using your Mac as you would typically, and if the Memory Pressure graph on recent OSs isnt looking full, you dont need more RAM; on earlier systems, if the pie chart of RAM use shows mostly green and blue, the amount of RAM you have is cool; if its mostly red and yellow, youre in hot water, and need to add more.

Again, you can sort the RAM chart by Memory to see what apps are demanding RAM; consider quitting RAM-hogs if youre not actively using them.

And dont ever bother with RAM cleaning or flushing apps; OS X takes care of that for you.).

In the early days of OS X, we regularly repaired permissions and ran apps such as Cocktail or OnyX to clear caches and more to keep the system trim and tidy.

These days theres less need for that, but theres usually no harm.

Usually, a Mac that has slowed further and further down has just accreted apps, files and more, and one of the surest ways of restoring the pep and vigor it had out of the box is to wipe the hard disk, install a fresh OS, and then, crucially, dont clone everything across using Time Machine or the like.

Instead, manually copy all your documents across and reinstall your apps from the App Store or CDomitting those you dont need.

Yes, its usually a colossal pain, but its often the most effective way to reinvigorate your Mac if you can set aside the time and accept the temporary disruption.

For laptops and the Mac mini, this typically means a 2.5-inch drivethough the MacBook Air has always used more exotic and different options throughout its lifewhile for desktops 3.5-inch drives are more usual; this isnt a hard-and-fast rule, though, so do check your specs carefully.

SSDs are rare, though they do exist, but you can convert 2.5-inch drives to 3.5-inch ones with a bracket; one might even be included with your 2.5-inch SSD, but if not, buy one separately.

Other World Computing even makes one specially for the 20092012 Mac Pro.

Most often these days that will mean a SATA connector, but you can buy SSDs with the older IDEPATAATA connector from, say, OWC; MacBook Airs use different connectors again.

Note that with older Macs (definitely true for those with IDE, but also true for those with SATA I and SATA II connections), the connection to the motherboard itself will be a bottleneck, so dont waste your money by buying anything other than a basic SSD; you dont get the benefit of a high-performance model.

Best Uses For Older Mac Mini