I installed it on my late '06 MacBook - 2GHz C2D, 2GB RAM, GMA950 - and honestly, I'm starting to think it was a huge mistake. When it first boots, it's perfect. After a few hours, it's absolutely unusable and beach balls when doing ANYTHING.
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Lion on Macbook core 2 duo
- Thread starter dlegend
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I installed it on my late '06 MacBook - 2GHz C2D, 2GB RAM, GMA950 - and honestly, I'm starting to think it was a huge mistake. When it first boots, it's perfect. After a few hours, it's absolutely unusable and beach balls when doing ANYTHING.
Well, I did end up upgrading earlier today...so far it's been ok and I've used it probably 10 hours, so hopefully I won't regret it. The beachballs are periodic, but not constant or aggravating. Fingers crossed!
I've got it on my MacBook, one generation newer. Specs are in my sig. Lion runs perfectly, and I have been running it for a couple days now and it's just as fast as when it first started up. It probably helps a lot that I have 6 GB RAM.
Honestly, my experience is probably related to hardware issues. I've been getting kernel panics occasionally — the error report always says "unresponsive processor."
That said, I defragged with Drive Genius (41% fragmented, supposedly), repaired the disk, and repaired permissions. Then I cleaned out my apps folder & login items and searched for beta Lion versions of everything else. Now it seems a lot better.
We'll see if it lasts…
CPU should be fine. If anything, you should upgrade your RAM and if things are still bad, get a faster HDD. Played around with Lion with my Late-2008 MacBook Pro with 4GB. Although sufficient for simple tasks like using Word and Safari (even that uses a fair bit of RAM), I don't know what's going to happen when I get around to using Photoshop/Illustrator.
I'll let you in on a little secret:
http://www.gmabooster.com/download.htm
Click on the GMA 950 button, and speed up your GPU.
Lion.
I have it installed on my Macbook late 2009. I upgraded the memory on it to 4GB when I bought the Mac new. When I installed Lion on it it felt sluggish once you had a few things opened in fullscreen. I looked in the Activity Viewer and with Safari and iPhoto opened in fullscreen my memory usage was 3.5GB. I found out that officially Apple says this model will only handle 4GB but I found out that it will handle 8GB with no problem so I upgraded to 8. You can get Kingston 8GB Apple kit for 69 bucks at Amazon. I have to say that the improvement is amazing. I don't get the beach ball hardly at all anymore and I can have several things opened to fullscreen and it just keeps humming along. So pile on the memory as far as you can because Lion really likes it.
I have it installed on my Macbook late 2009. I upgraded the memory on it to 4GB when I bought the Mac new. When I installed Lion on it it felt sluggish once you had a few things opened in fullscreen. I looked in the Activity Viewer and with Safari and iPhoto opened in fullscreen my memory usage was 3.5GB. I found out that officially Apple says this model will only handle 4GB but I found out that it will handle 8GB with no problem so I upgraded to 8. You can get Kingston 8GB Apple kit for 69 bucks at Amazon. I have to say that the improvement is amazing. I don't get the beach ball hardly at all anymore and I can have several things opened to fullscreen and it just keeps humming along. So pile on the memory as far as you can because Lion really likes it.
Installed an OCZ 120GB SSD on my wife's black 2.4GHz C2D MacBook w/4GB RAM and did a fresh 10.7 install via bootable USB thumb drive.
Works like a charm and pleasantly fast. Boots in seconds and I've yet to see it beachball. Doesn't seem to support the kinetic scrolling/rubberbanding effect that the newer machines do - may be due to the Intel X3100 integrated graphics versus the newer chips/integrated graphics, but no big deal. Otherwise, everything else seems to be performing up to expectations.
The fans do spin up more frequently it seems, but that occurred mainly while reinstalling all needed software (Office 2011, iWork, iLife, etc. and the downloadable post-Lion updates for everything), plus while reindexing the Spotlight database.
She was complaining that the machine was "getting slow" so I think this should help. I'm sure the biggest boost will come from the SSD versus the old, slow 160GB 5,200 RPM HD. Overall, for the $180 the SSD cost plus the price of Lion (which I bought anyway for my iMac and daughter's laptop), it's added a good year or more on to the life of the laptop.
A day of use since my cleanup, and it's still working like a dream. No beach balls or sluggishness. Boot times are relatively quick, and I never knew my MacBook could wake from sleep so fast! Overall, Lion is a win in my book. They just need to refine the new features a little more. All in good time, I'm sure.
To anyone having issues, I highly recommend you clean out everything that you don't use or need, install Lion betas if available, and check your drive out with Drive Genius and/or Recovery HD. These three simple, easily overlooked things made a world of difference for me, and I didn't even have to do a clean install!
FWIW: Late '06 white MacBook, 2GHz C2D, 2GB RAM, 500GB 7200RPM drive.
BlackBook 06'
I've got the Black C2D from 2006 with 2GB of Ram...
I went to go and update to Lion then got told I had no chance because my Ram Wasn't enough, forcing me to update to 2GB, but I havent't quite decided on whether to update or not, because I have an 8GB MBP running it like a dream, and I don't think I could handle any of the Lag that's gonna end up hacking me off :/
Worth it?
P.S - Anyone who has, does the scrolling still come out inverted on the TrackPad?
Thanks
I've got the Black C2D from 2006 with 2GB of Ram...
I went to go and update to Lion then got told I had no chance because my Ram Wasn't enough, forcing me to update to 2GB, but I havent't quite decided on whether to update or not, because I have an 8GB MBP running it like a dream, and I don't think I could handle any of the Lag that's gonna end up hacking me off :/
Worth it?
P.S - Anyone who has, does the scrolling still come out inverted on the TrackPad?
Thanks
I installed Lion on my 2006 MacBook 1.83 2GB... I can say I was surprised, I really was expecting it to slow down but figured future compatibility would outweigh the marginal slowdown.
When I installed it it was slow for a bit (most probably due to the spotlight indexing) but then it got pretty snappy. I do miss the fact that it doesn't have multitouch but it works well enough for a 6 year old laptop. Programs are still fast, if anything it seems resource allocation has been refined and certain tasks such as web browsing seem faster.
I also have it installed on my 2008 MBP 2.4Ghz 4GB and it works like a charm there... all features work and I really do enjoy the snappiness.... it doesn't seem buggy at all. This is coming from someone who was prepared to stay with Snow Leopard, the lack of rosetta is a bummer but I have an iMac G4 I can use when I need to run PPC apps.
When I installed it it was slow for a bit (most probably due to the spotlight indexing) but then it got pretty snappy. I do miss the fact that it doesn't have multitouch but it works well enough for a 6 year old laptop. Programs are still fast, if anything it seems resource allocation has been refined and certain tasks such as web browsing seem faster.
I also have it installed on my 2008 MBP 2.4Ghz 4GB and it works like a charm there... all features work and I really do enjoy the snappiness.... it doesn't seem buggy at all. This is coming from someone who was prepared to stay with Snow Leopard, the lack of rosetta is a bummer but I have an iMac G4 I can use when I need to run PPC apps.
All scrolling is inverted by default. If you don't like it, just change the preference. You'll be all set.
Another one here using it on my 07 black macbook. I upgraded it to 3GB ram late last year. It's running pretty smoothly, no excessive fan use or anything like that. Like stated before, some of the gestures are missing, but "hot corners" are pretty functional to fix that.
I've always been a mouse person, but I'm half tempted to get a magic trackpad now for the Macbook...just worried it'd be a waste for under a year since I don't expect to go past Ivy Ridge without upgrading. I have two Mighty mice and and an old Apple keyboard that are stored away, and I might still prefer my Logitech mouse in the end. It's hard not knowing exactly how much I'm missing out without the full gestures (and presumably better trackpad).
It took a few weeks to get used to, but I love the trackpad on my iMac and I never touch the mouse at all except for the occasional first-person shooter game.
I like it so much I bought another one for the Mac I have at work.
Running on 2010 White MacBook (2.4GHz core 2 duo, 2GB RAM) as smoothly as Snow Leopard did, though start-up time, as noted by owners of Macs across all specs and models, is about twice longer.
Btw does anyone know how to have the 'Restore windows of apps' unchecked by default? It kills me to make an extra gesture when I'm in hurry to turn my machine off.
Btw does anyone know how to have the 'Restore windows of apps' unchecked by default? It kills me to make an extra gesture when I'm in hurry to turn my machine off.
I like it, no real issues but still getting used to some of the changes. Running on a C2D 2ghz 2.5gb RAM Macbook with the GMA 950.
Seems like a worthwhile upgrade.
The program I use more than anything else, Seamonkey, runs great in it. Full screen mode is really easy to use - makes the screen seem huge
Seems like a worthwhile upgrade.
The program I use more than anything else, Seamonkey, runs great in it. Full screen mode is really easy to use - makes the screen seem huge
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I installed Lion on my Late 2009 MacBook with 4GB of RAM and overall performance has been great. Everything feels alot smoother than my previous Snow Leopard installation. I'm pretty sure once Apple starts releasing updates for the OS things will start getting even better, but so far it's great.
I'll let you in on a little secret:
http://www.gmabooster.com/download.htm
Click on the GMA 950 button, and speed up your GPU.
That link isn't working. When I try to download, it doesn't do anything.
I've been running Lion on my 2,1 MacBook (2007 2.16 GHz) since it was released. My machine has been upgraded to 4 GB RAM and an SSD. (240GB, OWC.)
Other than how long it took to install, I have noticed no slowdowns, beachballs, etc. It seems to boot up just as quickly as Snow Leopard. I haven't done any formal testing, but it seems faster than Snow Leopard. I've also had the machine running for hours with no performance degradation at all.
Getting used to some of the new features and look, but I am very happy with it so far. The older machine doesn't support some of the new features - mostly gestures, but I don't feel like I've lost anything moving to Lion.
Other than how long it took to install, I have noticed no slowdowns, beachballs, etc. It seems to boot up just as quickly as Snow Leopard. I haven't done any formal testing, but it seems faster than Snow Leopard. I've also had the machine running for hours with no performance degradation at all.
Getting used to some of the new features and look, but I am very happy with it so far. The older machine doesn't support some of the new features - mostly gestures, but I don't feel like I've lost anything moving to Lion.