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I have a Mid 2010 Mac Book Pro. It's now super slow. I am exploring upgrade options since I don't want to get a new laptop until end of college. My options are upgrading RAM to 8 GB from 4 GB or removing my SATA Hard Disk DVD Drive and putting SSD.

What would be better for performance? Any other options I am missing?

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SSDs provide double the performance of a normal spinning disk, in my experience. If you can afford more RAM as well, do that too. More RAM is always better. – Randolph West Aug 29 '12 at 4:42
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Without understanding why your MBP is slow and what you're trying to do with it, there's no way to give you useful advice about how to speed it up. – David Schwartz Aug 29 '12 at 5:21
There's really no answer to this question other than: Upgrade both and get as much as money can buy you. Shopping recommendations are off topic as per the FAQ partly for these reasons, sorry. As @DavidSchwartz said, if you're able to identify a special bottleneck, the slowness could be due to anything. – slhck♦ Aug 29 '12 at 5:42
For example, it could be slow because the CPU is overheating. – David Schwartz Aug 29 '12 at 6:00

closed as not constructive by slhck♦ Aug 29 '12 at 5:41

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2 Answers

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more ram is always a good thing, but the SSD is going to give you the most bang for your buck, really.

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More RAM or a faster disk will not speed-wise help if the MBP's installation is full of cruft.

My advice would be to make a full, bootable backup (TEST IT!) then re-install OS X and add the tools you need one by one.

Invest in SSD (first) or RAM (second) only if that doesn't help.

Another point to consider: An SSD is fast, but it will be smaller than your current HD.

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