Install Mavericks on my Late 2008 Aluminum MB?

[imageWIS]

Should I install Mavericks on my late 2008 Aluminum MacBook 2.0ghz / 4GB Ram?

At this point it's just used as a bed laptop, but still perfectly useable for browsing the web / watching vids. Will Mavericks speed up or slow down the MB?

Thanks!

 

[Burning Radio]

It works fine as long as you have 4GB of RAM (which you do). I've been running Mavericks since it was released and haven't had any problems with the OS side of things.

The only speed issues I've encountered have to do with my older 5400rpm drive/aging hardware.


NOTE: Don't update if you use QuickLook for a lot of files. The only video files supported now are .mov or .mp4 files. Thats my only gripe with updating.

 

[yjchua95]

Should I install Mavericks on my late 2008 Aluminum MacBook 2.0ghz / 4GB Ram?

At this point it's just used as a bed laptop, but still perfectly useable for browsing the web / watching vids. Will Mavericks speed up or slow down the MB?

Thanks!

With a 5400rpm HDD, Mavericks is going to crawl.

 

[Burning Radio]

With a 5400rpm HDD, Mavericks is going to crawl.

My current struggle. I went for space and ignored speed. Dumb move on my part. Worked fine for SL, Lion and Mountain Lion though. Apple has just been making their OS for SSD speeds and its definitely outpacing my old machine. Still usable for light computing though like the original poster asked about.


My problem now is -- spend the money on a large SSD to replace my 1 TB reasonably.

OR

Just save my $500 and put it towards an upgrade to buy a new fully SSD rMBP.



So to answer you OP, 4GB of RAM and any SSD will definitely benefit you with Mavericks. It'll run but you'll definitely notice lag without the SSD.

 

[RedRaven571]

IDK, I'm running mavericks on late 2008 MBP C2D 2.4 with 8gb RAM and 1tb hybrid drive and my system seems just fine.....

 

[imageWIS]

With a 5400rpm HDD, Mavericks is going to crawl.

I have a newish 500 GB 7200rpm HDD in it.

 

[yjchua95]

I have a newish 500 GB 7200rpm HDD in it.

The 7200rpm isn't too bad if it's a 3.5", but notebook 7200rpm drives are 2.5", which isn't that much faster than a 5400rpm one (perhaps operating at around 90MB/s).

 

[Chundles]

Runs fine on mine. I have 8GB RAM which helps. Still the same old 750GB 5400rpm drive.

 

[h9826790]

You can run Mavericks, but it won't give you any performance improvement due to the hardware limitation.

The OS itself can easily use up 6.5G of RAM, if you only have 4G, and no SSD, most likely you will experience a performance drop.

 

[Weaselboy]

Should I install Mavericks on my late 2008 Aluminum MacBook 2.0ghz / 4GB Ram?

At this point it's just used as a bed laptop, but still perfectly useable for browsing the web / watching vids. Will Mavericks speed up or slow down the MB?

Thanks!

I installed Mavs on my daughter's Macbook that is exactly the same spec and model you have and it works perfectly. I did not notice any speedup or slowdown either way. No issues.