Is it worth for me to upgrade to OS X 10.7 Lion ?

[BuddyMac]

I'm using a late 2007 White MacBook (2.2 GHz, 4GB RAM, 120 GB HDD) with Snow Leopard and an Apple *Mighty* Mouse.

Is it worth upgrading my MacBook to OS X 10.7 (Lion) by considering the following hardware limitations that I have?
1) I don't have any plans to buy a *Magic* Trackpad or a *Magic* Mouse to enjoy the Lion's "Multi-Touch Gestures" (since my 2007 MacBook doesn't support those gestures inbuilt).
2) Seems Airdrop won't support in my MacBook
3) Seems without horizontal two finger swipe, LaunchPad won't work properly

Beyond this what are the advantages that I will get with OS X 10.7?

 

[AmbiguousNinja]

1) Multi-Touch gestures are one of the features Apple mentioned the most to "sell" Lion. I'm not giving a definitive answer because it's all opinion but I personally always use multi-touch gestures in pretty much everything I do e.g. Safari History Swiping, Mission Control, and a million little things (BetterTouchTool).

2)Mine is compatible but don't worry, you're not missing much... Unless all your friends have an Airdrop compatible Macbook and Lion installed while you're all on the same local wifi network, you're most likely not going to be using this feature. I've even disabled this feature in my Finder prefs.

3)Launchpad, pfffft. Too much hype if you ask me, i never use it but I have it on my Macbook Pro because you never know... I'd be more concerned about not being able to use safari history swiping and Desktop switching.

Advantages:
-Eventually support for SL will be dropped (look at 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5)
-Some app developers are dropping support for all OSX's except for Lion (for whatever reason)

If I were you I WOULD invest in a magic trackpad, that or a new Macbook (I recommend the Pro, Air sucks I'm a bit biased) since a huge part of Lion involves Multi-Touch gestures.

Anyways good luck with your decision! Btw, unlike a lot of posts you may have read, I'm not experiencing any problems with Lion and I consider myself a more "advanced user."

 

[MacRum2011]

If you are happy the way everything is working currently then leave it working the way you like it. Why change it if it ain't broke. I'm waiting for 10.7.2 to see any improvements. If you can't add any more than 4 GB ram then I'd stay SL. I have issues with lots of rem being used and I can't upgrade more than 4GB.

 

[maflynn]

I found Lion to work fairly well performance wise on 8gb. I'm not so sure that it will run as fast with 4gb.

Given that there are facets of Lion that you won't (or can't) use. I'd say stick with what works.

 

[MacRum2011]

I found Lion to work fairly well performance wise on 8gb. I'm not so sure that it will run as fast with 4gb.

Given that there are facets of Lion that you won't (or can't) use. I'd say stick with what works.

my experience with 4GB is that i'm always maxed out when running applications like iMovie, Photoshop etc. Lion does like a bit of ram.

 

[vitzr]

I found Lion to work fairly well performance wise on 8gb. I'm not so sure that it will run as fast with 4gb.

Given that there are facets of Lion that you won't (or can't) use. I'd say stick with what works.

As I was scanning this thread I was about to post the very same thing.

I bought a 13" MBA with Lion, just to try it because I didn't want to mess with my perfectly fast and stable Macs on SL. Yet out of nothing more than curiosity I really wanted to try Lion.

With just 4GB in my 13" MBA it's not very fast.

My friends have MBP's with 8GB & SSD's and they all run really fast, smooth and enjoyably with Lion.

My personal preferences, don't match up with Lion, so there is no compelling reason for me to upgrade my other MBP's, Mac Pro etc.

That's not to say I will still feel that way a year from now if they add features that are appropriate for my needs. But for now I am very happy with 10.6.5

 

[BuddyMac]

I found Lion to work fairly well performance wise on 8gb. I'm not so sure that it will run as fast with 4gb.

Given that there are facets of Lion that you won't (or can't) use. I'd say stick with what works.

OMG!!! I don't know that Lion requires (for better performance) more than 4 GB RAM. My MacBook supports a max of 4 GB RAM only.

So, I should stay with SL happily

 

[maflynn]

So, I should stay with SL happily

If you're happy with SL, and there's no compelling reason to upgrade, that is no killer Lion feature you want. Then why not wait, you can always upgrade later