Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

T.nguyen0307

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 2, 2013
1
0
Hello I have a mid 2009 macbook 4gb ram 1tb hard drive and i was wondering is it a better idea to stay with snow leopard os or upgrade to a newer os. Would lion or mountain lion make my mac any faster? I have seen all the features on lion and mountain lion and i am only thrilled about a few. I have used snow leopard for a long time and i feel fine with it but i want to make an upgrade. Does anyone know the pros and cons of lion and mountain lion? i have heard many people like them and many people prefer snow leopard much more. Does anyone know how my laptop would act with lion or mountain lion? If it makes it slow down i wouldnt want to upgrade but if it would be fine i might just want to switch. I dont want to spend money on one of them and then find out that it sucks more then the one i have now.
 

Ddyracer

macrumors 68000
Nov 24, 2009
1,786
31
Hello I have a mid 2009 macbook 4gb ram 1tb hard drive and i was wondering is it a better idea to stay with snow leopard os or upgrade to a newer os. Would lion or mountain lion make my mac any faster? I have seen all the features on lion and mountain lion and i am only thrilled about a few. I have used snow leopard for a long time and i feel fine with it but i want to make an upgrade. Does anyone know the pros and cons of lion and mountain lion? i have heard many people like them and many people prefer snow leopard much more. Does anyone know how my laptop would act with lion or mountain lion? If it makes it slow down i wouldnt want to upgrade but if it would be fine i might just want to switch. I dont want to spend money on one of them and then find out that it sucks more then the one i have now.

Stick with snow leapord. Lion and ml are still slower by a fair bit. Also, you don't seem to buy into feature hype so that's another reason to stick with it.

Your computer mosly likely won't be faster with it. There is mavericks to think about as well, it's not too bad but unless it gets a speed boost on launch avoid it as well.


Hope this helps.
 

benwiggy

macrumors 68020
Jun 15, 2012
2,382
201
I have an Early 2009 MacBook, and I have run 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 on it. TBH, I haven't noticed any difference in performance between the three. (I installed an SSD at some point, can't remember when, which made the biggest performance boost.)

IMO, there are many nice features in Mountain Lion -- some of them not well documented or advertised. However, from a purely financial point of view, you would do well to wait for 10.9 and buy that when it comes out later this year.
It looks like it will perform very well and fix some of the issues with 10.8.

Whatever you upgrade to, you will have to get used to two major changes: Autosave and Resume. OS X now automatically saves your document right from creation, and if you want to use a document as the basis for another, you need to "Duplicate" it, then work on it, rather than working on it and then Saving As.
Resume causes an app to reload all the open document it had when you quit it; and the OS relaunches all the open apps at shutdown when you restart it.

These two things have cause the most outrage in some quarters, but my advice is simply to get used to them and work with them, rather than against them. All computer metaphors are arbitrary, after all, and we can learn new things.
 

Eithanius

macrumors 68000
Nov 19, 2005
1,541
412
Stick with Snow Leopard.

Upgrade to Lion/Mountain Lion or the upcoming Mavericks ONLY IF you have an SSD installed. Since you have a 1TB hard drive installed, I'd imagine storage space is more important to you...? Else plonk in a OWC Mercury Electra 3G 960GB drive and you're good to go for the latest.
 

Dave Braine

macrumors 68040
Mar 19, 2008
3,990
352
Warrington, UK
I've just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion after putting it off due to the negative comments on Lion and ML. Have to say I can't see what the fuss was all about. Maybe it's because having read about all the comments, I was prepared for ML's little quirks.

I would recommend upgrade. You may like to do it the way I did, and install onto an external drive, migrate all stuff from your Mac and have a play with it for a while before installing it on your Mac.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.