extending life on a MACBOOK 2.1 HELP

[FWACATA]

I've had the same Macbook now for almost 5 years or more, and can't say I've ever had trouble, but now recently since I'm still working in OSX 10.4.11, and an old version of Firefox, I'm at the end of what i can do with no updates and falling fast behind. Mind i have a brand new IMAC at work, so that does the heavy lifting, but a simple .PSD of 100 MB seem to almost choke this make to death. What can I do?

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB21.00A5.B07
SMC Version: 1.17f0


Can I just get some RAM and update the OS to Leopard and be good? Or should I chuck it, and just buy a new laptop? I'm on the verge of buying one but wanted to save more money to gt some more bang for the buck and wanted to keep this Macbook going for writing and surfing the web.

I simply have no idea....

 

[InuNacho]

Max the Ram and stick in a SSD. Yup, I know your pain when doing something not terribly heavy like Photoshop, anything bigger than 8MP turns the thing into a wind tunnel.

 

[Intell]

I have a Macbook2,1 as well. It can take 4GB of ram, but because of a hardware limitation it can only use 3.3GB of it. I'd suggest upgrading the ram to the maximum and upgrading to a new hard drive or an SSD.

I also suggest skipping Leopard and Snow Leopard. Leopard is already outdated and Snow Leopard only has a few months left. Instead, upgrade it to Lion. Lion is officially the last version of Mac OS X your machine can run. Some people have succeeded is putting Mountain Lion onto a Macbook2,1, but it is unknown how long until Apple completely kills Mountain Lion on older Macs. If Apple continues the one year update cycle for Mac OS X, your Macbook will last you until about August 20 of 2013. Then Lion's support is ended.

 

[InuNacho]

I thought you couldn't hop straight to Lion even with the official Apple USB stick.

 

[Intell]

You can, but you must wipe the drive first and do a clean install.