Is Snow Leopard worth it for EARLY Inel Imacs?

[markcres]

Hi All,

My Intel iMac is one of the early ones (it was delivered to me in January 2006) and is a 1.83GHZ/2MB RAM.

Would I benefit from upgrading to Snow Leopard.... or is it really only going to give speed improvements to the later Core 2 Duos with their better chipsets?

Thanks

 

[thegoldenmackid]

Yes remember Snow Leopard is supposed to make things faster and more efficient.

 

[brendu]

you should see an improvement in speed and stability... if you have leopard its only $30 so no reason not to... it should also have better security which is always a good thing, especially as apple becomes more popular and hackers begin to target them.

 

[JPamplin]

Well, two things...

First, I definitely think SL will be great for your iMac, and you already have 2GB of RAM (the most that unit can hold), which should be fine for normal work.

BUT, if you really want to extend the life of your iMac, then you should consider upgrading your CPU to a T7600 Core 2 Duo (2.33ghz/4mb L2/667) which appears to be the fastest chip your iMac will support. Other than the speed increase, the C2D is a 64-bit chip, whereas your 1.83 is 32-bit.

I see them on eBay for $250 and less. Instructions are here :

http://www.maclife.com/article/create_upgrade_your_imac_to_a_core_2_duo_processor

do it! ;-). JP

 

[markcres]

Well, two things...

First, I definitely think SL will be great for your iMac, and you already have 2GB of RAM (the most that unit can hold), which should be fine for normal work.

BUT, if you really want to extend the life of your iMac, then you should consider upgrading your CPU to a T7600 Core 2 Duo (2.33ghz/4mb L2/667) which appears to be the fastest chip your iMac will support. Other than the speed increase, the C2D is a 64-bit chip, whereas your 1.83 is 32-bit.

I see them on eBay for $250 and less. Instructions are here :

http://www.maclife.com/article/create_upgrade_your_imac_to_a_core_2_duo_processor

do it! ;-). JP

Thanks for the advice folks.. I think I will indeed be upgrading to SL.

The idea about upgrading the processor is interesting. I may soon have to replace the HDD as it is getting noisy. If I have to open it up for one I could do the other. I hate to stop using a machine just because it is getting long in the tooth. I have an old Macintosh Classic on my desk which I use for creating graphs for my publications... I prefer it to the fancy new software I can get for OS X