mac upgrades and Questions

[comda]

Greetings Mac Rumors!

I am like many out there the proud owner of a 2007 white core 2 duo macbook. and i love it! Over the past few years(ive had it since december 2007) its been an amazing machine! Last year i gave it an upgrade from the original 1gb ram, 120gb hard drive and leopard. I bought snow leopard, got 4gb ram and a woping, 750GB seagate barracuda! Its been great! There are a few questions i do have as i do want to keep using this machine for at least 2 more years. Many computers off the shelf compare in specs with the AMD E1,E2 series and celerons and pentium series. If im not mistaken the Intel core 2 duo at 2.2ghz still beats those! so i wanna still use it for daily email, school homework as i will finishing high school this year.

Anyways. what id like to know. how well will this machine run with lion installed? using snow leopard this past year i've noticed the machine does have a few lag spots. such as scrolling on certain web pages and the dock mode of applications but its minor. im seeing snow leopard is coming to end its support so i want to upgrade. Will it be a good choice or should i continue using what i am? i have never used lion and i dont want a laggy machine. and if i do decide to upgrade where can i get a physical copy. will apple ship me one of their thumb drives?

The next question is a boot camp question. I read somewhere online that if i wish to install windows 8 via boot camp i need version 5. im currently using 3.04. Am i able to upgrade just the boot camp or is it only possible with the OS upgrade to lion? i had XP running in bootcamp but id like to have something more modern. Ive noticed 8 runs WAY faster then 7 and since all i will be doing on windows is a little web browsing, photoshop and maybe a little bit of java coding i figured maybe 8s a good idea. what do you think? 7 or 8?

My next question is heat. right now just this window open im running at 35 degrees celcuis. fans running at 2500 rpm. but ive noticed as soon as a video on youtube plays its increases fast! is that normal with these models now?

My last question is on a PC you can disable certain things to make it faster. what can i do to speed it up a bit? its not bad but i know it can be a little better..

If you have read all of that. Thank-you. i look forward to reading responses. I dont have a tone of money and i love this machine so if i can keep using it for a few more years i will be happy. THanks and please let me know.

 

[brdeveloper]

Anyways. what id like to know. how well will this machine run with lion installed? using snow leopard this past year i've noticed the machine does have a few lag spots. such as scrolling on certain web pages and the dock mode of applications but its minor. im seeing snow leopard is coming to end its support so i want to upgrade. Will it be a good choice or should i continue using what i am?

I would stay on Snow Leopard. Lion is sometimes referred as the "Windows Vista" of OSX updates. Also, as you don't have a 64bit EFI (until what I know), you can't use a 64bit kernel, and Snow Leopard is really great at 32bit. If you want your machine even faster, install a SSD and put your 750GB drive into an external firewire enclosure keeping your USB ports free (and leaving the entire FW bandwidth to the hard disk). You could also remove the Superdrive and use an internal enclosure to your HDD to use it on the Superdrive bay as a backup/media unit.

The next question is a boot camp question. I read somewhere online that if i wish to install windows 8 via boot camp i need version 5. im currently using 3.04. Am i able to upgrade just the boot camp or is it only possible with the OS upgrade to lion? i had XP running in bootcamp but id like to have something more modern. Ive noticed 8 runs WAY faster then 7 and since all i will be doing on windows is a little web browsing, photoshop and maybe a little bit of java coding i figured maybe 8s a good idea. what do you think? 7 or 8?

Don't know about Bootcamp.

My next question is heat. right now just this window open im running at 35 degrees celcuis. fans running at 2500 rpm. but ive noticed as soon as a video on youtube plays its increases fast! is that normal with these models now?

I read another post saying these earlier Macbook models were more prone to get dirty, so an internal cleanup should improve the heating problem, but not sure if it's normal.

My last question is on a PC you can disable certain things to make it faster. what can i do to speed it up a bit? its not bad but i know it can be a little better..

Don't know... Snow Leopard is already very clean. I only see a SSD as suggestion for a speed bump on your machine.

 

[comda]

i appreciate the quick reply. So your saying my machine is running in 32bit?

 

[brdeveloper]

i appreciate the quick reply. So your saying my machine is running in 32bit?

If you just clean-installed Snow Leopard, yes. I've read a topic which say your Macbook can run Lion at 64-bit (so your EFI is probably updated to EFI64; if not, make sure you're running 10.6.8).
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21420372?tstart=0#21420372?tstart=0

But there's a hack allowing to run 64-bit kernel on non-64-bit-OS-eligible 64-bit Intel Macs (it's a confusing sentence, so read carefully ). My white late-2009 Macbook couldn't run a 64-bit kernel officially, but there was a hack which permitted it running, I just don't remember the link which had the patch. Maybe it was posted on Apple Support Communities.

Hopefully with some researching you can enable 64-bit kernel support. Make sure you did a backup before trying. In my case it was straightforward. I wouldn't try Lion as most software still runs on Snow Leo and its like having to decide between Windows XP vs. Vista.

One more thing: you don't need a 64-bit kernel for running 64-bit apps. Think that 32-bit kernel is about 5-10% slower, but saves some amount of RAM memory. If you have a lot of RAM, like 8GB, I think it's worth enabling 64-bit, otherwise 32-bit is ok.

 

[Bruno09]

fans running at 2500 rpm. but ive noticed as soon as a video on youtube plays its increases fast! is that normal with these models now?

This is because YouTube uses Flash.

If you use Safari, try ClickToFlash : menu bar / Safari / Safari extensions : install ClickToFlash.

"ClickToFlash prevents the Flash plug-in from running. It replaces any Flash element on a webpage with a placeholder; simply click the placeholder to load the Flash content. ClickToFlash also lets you replace Flash videos from select websites (such as YouTube) with H.264 video. Other optional features include advanced whitelisting."

 

[comda]

For the flash. i do use firefox cause safari with multiple open tabs. and in firefox i have something like click to flash.. I have to click the window to execute it. otherwise it doesn't play.

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however. i got win 7 ultimate running on boot camp. when i try to run win 8 DVD i get to a menu where it asks to select dvd version but i cant its frozen. would upgrade from 7 to 8 via the win 7 OS work?

 

[Twimfy]

For the flash. i do use firefox cause safari with multiple open tabs. and in firefox i have something like click to flash.. I have to click the window to execute it. otherwise it doesn't play.

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however. i got win 7 ultimate running on boot camp. when i try to run win 8 DVD i get to a menu where it asks to select dvd version but i cant its frozen. would upgrade from 7 to 8 via the win 7 OS work?

Yes it would but if I were you I'd stay on Win 7. Mainly because it's arguably a better operating system and driver support in Win 7 is a little more stable.