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Best OS upgrade for Mac Book Pro 8.1

J

jasimon9

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 11, 2009
184
3
I have a 2011 Mac Book Pro 8.1 used by my wife. It still is running Snow Leopard. What is the best upgrade for it?

I have heard the Yosemite could be too demanding for it, as many users have complained.

I am thinking of upgrading it now, but wondering how far to take it.
 
jasimon9 said:
I have a 2011 Mac Book Pro 8.1 used by my wife. It still is running Snow Leopard. What is the best upgrade for it?

I have heard the Yosemite could be too demanding for it, as many users have complained.

I am thinking of upgrading it now, but wondering how far to take it.
Click to expand...

The highest level upgrade you'll be most satisfied with on a 2011 MBP is Mavericks. The latest version of Mavericks is great. My wife's 2011 MBP is struggling to keep up on Yosemite. She doesn't care enough to move back down, and I imagine the performance of Yosemite will improve, but I would be cautious to move up to Yosemite until it's improved.

Short answer: Mavericks. I question the security of anything earlier.
 
jasimon9 said:
I have a 2011 Mac Book Pro 8.1 used by my wife. It still is running Snow Leopard. What is the best upgrade for it?

I have heard the Yosemite could be too demanding for it, as many users have complained.

I am thinking of upgrading it now, but wondering how far to take it.
Click to expand...

As long as you buy an SSD for it, Yosemite will run smoothly on it.
 
My 2009 13" mbp with only 4 gigs of ram and its Core 2 Duo and a standard HD is running Yosemite fine. I've noticed no real difference between the two for general web browsing, email, office tasks, and such.

The 2011 is still a great machine, so I would think she'd be fine with Yosemite. On the flip side, I can see the benefits of going with Mavericks and waiting for Yosemite to be packed some. That would give her some time to adjust to all the changes. SL to Mav is a decent change.
 
Last edited:
Stick Yosemite on there :) I had it on my stock MBP Early 2011 and it ran great! Then I upgraded to an SSD and it runs even better!
 
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