Early 2008 Macbook Pro - Thinking It Might Be Upgrade Time

[samo1215]

So I have a 2008 Macbook Pro. It works but is definitly starting to show its age. Right now I have OSX 10.6.8 installed and was wondering if upgrading to 10.9 would give it much of a performance boost.

The area I have the biggest issue with is in running virtual machines. I have Parallels 6 and noticed that when I went from OSX 10.5 to 10.6, all of my VMs starting running super slowly. If I upgrade to 10.9 I have to upgrade to Parallels 9 as well but would rather spend the $50 on the Parallels upgrade than the $2000+ to get a new computer.

Any thoughts?

 

[ya1950]

If you haven't already done so you can upgrade to a SSD and max out your memory. This will speed you up considerably without upgrading to a new machine. Simply upgrading the OS will probably not give you what you are looking for. I run Parallels on a late 2008 with 8 MB memory and a SSD with no problems.

 

[Romanesq]

Mav

10.9 is superb and on my Penryn runs great, best ever. RAM at 6 GB now so that helps and an SSD will be interesting.

Definitely move ahead.

 

[Ryan1524]

With my 2007 MBP, SSD and Mavericks helped but I wouldn't want to run a VM on it. Those upgrades bought me time to wait for Haswell, but definitely not a long-term plan.

 

[rczj]

If you haven't already done so you can upgrade to a SSD and max out your memory. This will speed you up considerably without upgrading to a new machine. Simply upgrading the OS will probably not give you what you are looking for. I run Parallels on a late 2008 with 8 MB memory and a SSD with no problems.

This! I have early 2008 with 6 gb ram (max) and 10.8 - it's fast, but was better on 10.6.8. Anyway, it's faster than my newer Macbook Pro Unibody 2010. Now I plan to put SSD 240gb drive.
Remember, early 2008 can handle up to 6 gb ram, 8gb is for late 2008.

 

[ohbrilliance]

As others have noted, maxing out the RAM and upgrading to an SSD should provide a large improvement.

Does anybody know why VMs that once ran run poorly in newer versions of OS X on the same hardware?
I had no trouble running XP on VMWare/Tiger back in 2007, but it runs like a dog on the same Macbook Pro upgraded to Mountain Lion and an SSD. Fresh installs of XP, so that's not a factor.

(I'm now on a rMBP, so I'm asking this as a matter of interest).

 

[Romanesq]

Mavericks man

Lots of big pluses on Mavericks 10.9 with memory handling and it's the fastest OS Apple has ever put out there.

It's very smooth on this Penryn. Waiting to install a Samsung SSD and then will be maxed out.
Just 10.9 it.