iMac 2008 Upgrade Questions

[lAnthonyl]

I bought an iMac 2008 and got it in the mail today - I'm loving it so far (my first mac btw!) and I was curious on upgrading it. It came pre-installed with mac osx 10.5.8. I want to get mountain lion, but I need to get mac osx snow leopard 10.6 first in order to get mountain lion. I heard you can call apple and get snow leopard really cheap, I searched around amazon and ebay and they're really expensive for no reason. So is that the appropriate approach of upgrades or are those the right order? Also, when I upgrade, do I lose any files and such? I don't mind since I don't have that much files anyways since I just got my mac and the ones I have I can backup on my external harddrive. Any suggestions is appreciated!

 

[cyclotron451]

Hi lAnthonyl,
well you probably have an iMac7,1 or 8,1 - from 2008. They work great.
I've upgraded both of mine to at least 4GB RAM (the iMac8,1 is actually at 2GB+4GB) OSX10.6/7/8 all *need* as much RAM as possible.

You also *need* as you mentioned the external Apple formatted USB hard disk to give you Time Machine backups - this will ensure that any of your OS upgrades above Leopard have a copy of your files in the Time Machine to avoid losing data , as you asked. See Time Machine on Leopard

For the upgrade to Mountain Lion you might consider a genius bar appointment, would they be able to help you with a paid upgrade? Apple Store is bound to have a store copy of 10.6 for your iMac, for the 10 minutes it's needed?. Lion can be happily skipped, all my 2008 iMacs are running OS 10.8.2 very well, very snappily.

 

[Mike in Kansas]

Here's some additional info on taking your Mac from Leopard to Mountain Lion.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167868/how_to_install_mountain_lion_over_leopard.html

 

[lAnthonyl]

Thank you guys for the help and tips! I'll call my local Apple store and see if I can make an appointment with someone at the genius bar.

EDIT - I decided to call, and the guy on the phone told me I could buy a snow leopard CD for just $19.99, which is really awesome because I've seen people put up snow leopard on Amazon and eBay for $80! What a rip-off, I'm glad I called apple! lol

 

[ricardopicozzi]

OS and Memory Upgrade

Anthony, for me here in Brazil was easy to request a Snow Leopard upgrade, I[ve paid U$25,00 for that and they sent me the CD via currier. I just have called the Brazil Apple Store for that.

Now I have a question to all regarding memory upgrades. I saw that the MAC supports up to 6GB, but I can't find anywhere to buy a 2GB + 4GB memory card. I only find 2X4GB or 2X2GB... so my questions is, if I buy 2X4GB would the iMac read up to 6MB at least...or he will not accept that and return an error. Weird question I know...