Very slow mac

I have a imac 20/2.16/1g/250/sd/ap/bt purchased may 2007. My operating system is mac osx snow leopard--v 10.6.8. I was recently notified by apple that this is not supported any more. I can't even upgrade to the current os. It is very, very slow and the rainbow wheel spends a lot of time spinning. Is this because my computer is old? Would a new one be faster or do i have something else wrong?

 

There are likely 2 things that are having the most impact.

1) 1 GB is pretty limiting. More would definitely help. If you open Activity Monitor, look at the number of Page Outs which will tell how often memory is being cached.

2) How full is your HD? (Get Info on the hard drive icon)

I think what you have is an iMac 5,1 which was the 2006 model.
I have a 2007 iMac and it is still a perfectly fine machine, albeit mine is slightly faster.

Obviously a new one would be faster but I wouldn't jump to that yet.

Also, what do you primarily use your iMac for?

 

HEADRUSH, THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESPONSE. HOW DO I GO TO "ACTIVITY MONITOR" AND WHAT WILL IT TELL ME? HOW DO I FIND OUT HOW FULL MY HD IS? I PRIMARILY USE iMAC FOR PAYING BILLS, SHOPPING AND COMPARISON PRICING, PLAYING A FEW GAMES, AND E-MAIL, ETC. I HOPE THIS INFO HELPS. ALSO, WHAT IS MACKEEPER? IS THIS SOMETHING I SHOULD SUBSCRIBE TO? THANK YOU

 

Normally after a certain period of time any machine even a mac hard drive becomes slow. Depends upon the free space available on the drive. If you see your hard drive is full of data then you need to launch some cleaning operation to wipe out unwanted software, files, large files and duplicate files. You can also clear out caches, temp files from mac.

 

Thank you for your reply. How do i clean my hard drive? Also, is mackeeper a good program for doing this or can i do it myself? Thank you

 

I would advise you to stay away from Mackeeper software since this app brings bunch of other complications to OS X. Instead try this utility to clean OS X startup drive.

Also read why not to install Mackeeper https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3691

 

Throw and SSD in it. You'll notice a huge improvement. Particularly if you can squeeze in some more RAM

 

Thank you for your response and help. I was suspicious about mackeeper, thanks for the warning. I read why not to install mackeeper. Excellent article. I also checked out stellarinfo.com. Will the free program be ok or do you advise paying for the upgrade?

 

Depending upon your requirement, you can run free or paid version of the software. Free version cleans system junks, logs, trashes and manage extensions while paid removes more useless data such as duplicate files, unused large files, caches, language packs etc. Also include Uninstaller. So, it all depend upon your Mac disk drive condition. Also it sounds good as you got early warning regarding Mackeeper.

 

You haven't told us how full your hard drive is yet. (Get Info from the menu bar when HD icon selected)

Although these programs that "clean" log files, language packs etc can help, these files are generally not that much in the scheme of GB sized hard drives. With only 1GB RAM, your Mac is likely swapping memory to the hard drive.
If that is happening, then it's not just how much free space but the size of empty blocks. These programs won't help for that.

Another thing you should post is if you open Activity Monitor, look for a piece of data listed as page outs.
This will say how much memory is being swapped to the HD.

Another thing to check is in System Preferences -> Energy Saver, check what interval putting the hard drive to sleep is set at.
Even the newest Macs can be slowed waiting for a rotary hard drive to spin up. Combine that with memory swapping and that could be slowing your Mac even more.