Laptop or iPad

[Annbee]

The problem is it runs a bit slow and the major issue is that it “greys out” and I need to force it to quit and then restart it. I have taken it to Apple but they can’t fix the problem

Did Apple mention why you were having the problem? Because I don't want to scare you, but that might be a sign of a dying hard drive. I have had similar. You might be best to clone your hard drive as a back up. If you don't know how to do that, you may know someone who is capable or you could take it to a good mac repairer (I've never used Apple so I don't know if they'd do a clone for you).

[Blairvadach]

Thanks for all your suggestions.
I have everything backed up on iCloud and some stuff on pen drive!
If/when I need to replace my laptop it will probably be a new laptop ( looked at the air model and some people say that they have had issues with the screen breaking due to a manufacturing issue…Apple disputes this!).
Thanks again

[Biggles50]

If you take my advice I would spend £70 and buy a portable SSD and copy all your files onto it.

Once you have safely copied everything then an App like Clean My Mac should help to speed up your Macbook.

[Blairvadach]

If you take my advice I would spend £70 and buy a portable SSD and copy all your files onto it.

Once you have safely copied everything then an App like Clean My Mac should help to speed up your Macbook.

Thanks for your advice
Is there any specific SSD I need for my MacBook ( it’s about 9 years old.
I don’t have too many files to transfer but about 20000 photos!!!’

[andrewalston]

VIEWING things on a touchscreen works well.

However I find that text input on a touchscreen is completely impractical, and a LOT of creating a decent tree is the transcription of records. "Predictive text" is wholly unsuitable for that.

If your Macbook has an old-style mechanical hard drive, updating it with a solid state drive would speed it up no end. Good quality SSDs, from reputable makers, are quite cheap these days.

[Biggles50]

If you take my advice I would spend £70 and buy a portable SSD and copy all your files onto it.

Once you have safely copied everything then an App like Clean My Mac should help to speed up your Macbook.

Thanks for your advice
Is there any specific SSD I need for my MacBook ( it’s about 9 years old.
I don’t have too many files to transfer but about 20000 photos!!!’

What I suggest is an external device just for storage, you can update the Macbook internal hard drive but that is not a task for the feint hearted to do as a DIY project.

I suggested copying the user files to an external SSD then run Clean My Mac and see what the end result is, it should speed it up.  I used this programme on my Wife’s old iMac and it works, you just subscribe, run the cleaner the unsubscribe before the trial ends unless you want to keep the subscription.

An external SSD could be a Crucial Pro 1Tb SSD which can be bought for £69.99 off Amazon or £71.99 from Scan where a Corsair 1Tb  is £68.98.  Samsung also make excellent SSD’s and I have their SSD’s inside the PC that I recently built for myself together with a couple of Corsair SSD’s

Crucial and Corsair are very well known manufacturers of memory sticks that are used in vast numbers of computers, these memory sticks are better known as RAM.

I buy all my PC components from Scan as they are only 20 minutes away from me, never had any problems with them.

A 1Tb internal SSD should cost about £55, they are a 2 1/2” SATA3 SSD drive