Do I have any options?

[macnewbie89]

I recently received my brothers old Macbook 3,1. Its running OSX 10.5.8.

Forgive my ignorance, I know nothing at all about Macs. Always been a PC user.

Im trying to format this computer as it is very cluttered but I have no idea how to get started...

Am I formatting the HD the same way I would with a PC?

Ive tried finding information on this macbook and what it can handle but am seeing very different answers on the apple forum.

Do I have any options for updating/upgrading? If so, what are they?

Do I need a cd to do this?

Ive tried finding tutorials on how to upgrade but they all seem to rely on a cd which I do not have.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[saifrc]

The last OS that was made available on disc was OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which you can get on disc from Apple for $20. You can boot up from that disc and reformat the hard drive, while installing a fresh copy of the OS.

The maximum supported OS is OS X 10.7 Lion, which I think is only available from the Mac App Store, a feature made available in Snow Leopard. I think that's going to set you back another $20, but I'd say it's worth it. I heard that Lion was available on flash drives once upon a time, but that might be harder to find.

I'm not specifically familiar with that MacBook, but I think you might have an EFI update as well.