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MB Aluminium Dec 2008 (10.6.8); OS Upgrade to Mavericks?

P

parsu538

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 23, 2013
4
0
Malaysia
Anyone else with the same MB spec as mine upgraded to Mavericks?

If so, did you encounter any issues / problems? Was it a worthwhile upgrade? Anything to look out for?

I would be doing the app upgrade as opposed to a clean install. But before doing so, was wondering if it's a good move?

Remembered previously when considering upgrades to Lion & Mountain Lion, technicians recommended against it as it would be slow & sluggish since my hardware is on 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB DDR3 (with 128GB HDD).

However there's a wave of feedbacks that Mavericks would actually speed up & be a breeze?
 
parsu538 said:
Anyone else with the same MB spec as mine upgraded to Mavericks?

If so, did you encounter any issues / problems? Was it a worthwhile upgrade? Anything to look out for?

I would be doing the app upgrade as opposed to a clean install. But before doing so, was wondering if it's a good move?

Remembered previously when considering upgrades to Lion & Mountain Lion, technicians recommended against it as it would be slow & sluggish since my hardware is on 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB DDR3 (with 128GB HDD).

However there's a wave of feedbacks that Mavericks would actually speed up & be a breeze?
Click to expand...

Are you sure that your storage unit is a 128GB HDD? Or is it a 128GB SSD? I think Mavericks can work on your machine. In some aspects Mav's better than SL and in others not really. My first impressions is that battery life had a little improvement over SL. Boot times, launching apps seem slightly slower, but it's a subjective impression and not definitive. Think seriously on upgrading RAM as 2GB is too tight these days.
 
I would put 4 or 8GB ram in it before upgrading. The main problem I have is that I can't scroll in Finder, which really annoys me. I have a Carbon Copy Cloner HDD with Mountain Lion, I might put that in until Mavericks has some updates.
 
I would upgrade. I have two of the same computers you have with slightly different specs. Mavericks is great in terms of overall performance, especially the memory compression feature.

You could upgrade it with 2GB of RAM, but I'd recommend upping that to 4GB RAM shortly after.
 
Is there anything it offers you can't live without for a while. Ability to sync my devices and messages app has driven me to recent upgrades. I could have done without iOS 7 though.
 
Yea I think generally good experiences are seen with those using at least 4GB RAM & have an SSD.

Well, in terms of features, sure I think there's a decent leap between Snow Leopard & Mavericks. Just want to introduce a fresh breath of life onto my MB. It's been 5 solid years with absolutely no problems at all. Just want to play around with new features.

My aim is to make my MB last until next year 2Q 2014 at the very least as am holding out for a rumored Apple MB 12" product which combines the best of the lightweight & portability of the MB Air & the computing power of the MBP; all on a Retina Display. That would be a worthwhile upgrade for sure.

Let me search out for a few more feedback from the others to see if there's any major set backs / slow downs they've experienced before deciding. Quite frankly, Snow Leopard works perfect & gets the job done.
 
parsu538 said:
Quite frankly, Snow Leopard works perfect & gets the job done.
Click to expand...

Some things I perceived after upgrading that could make you wait further before upgrading from Snow Leopard:

CONS:

1. Preview is better in SL when searching text into PDFs. I disliked the sidebar at left. Besides, it's too large, taking a lot of room from the text you're reading. If you are editing text at left and reading at right, those ~100px are precious in a 13", non-retina screen.

2. If you use Crossover for running sporadic Windows apps, you'll have to wait until they provide a working version for Mavericks. Also, my license is too old for being eligible to upgrade. So, I'll have to learn how to work with the "wine-crossover" package from MacPorts without having a GUI.

Also, some improvements I expected didn't turn into reality. For example, Mail.app could support Exchange ActiveSync, but no - it continues supporting Exchange, but not ActiveSync.

PROS:

On the plus side, you'll get some minutes of battery improvement... as a subjective impression, it appears to work. I feel the battery taking longer to be fully depleted. Also, memory compression can make better use of your RAM memory.

Finder is better than in SL. Now it supports almost everything that TotalFinder addon provided to SL like tabs and showing folders on top/bottom. However, it still lacks cutting files.
 
I have a 2.4 Gig Aluminum Macbook with 8GB of RAM. I can tell you the Mavericks experience has been even better than Mountain Lion. Battery life is improved and tasks seem a tad faster.
 
Thanks for all the feedback & pointers. Very encouraging. It's Apple after all; the beauty of the perfect marriage between hardware & software to offer such an amazing experience always.

If anyone specifically has the same configuration as my MB & could report; that would be awesome.

Simply because, the upgrade / difference in the higher RAM & the used of SSD makes a world of a difference.
 
parsu538 said:
Thanks for all the feedback & pointers. Very encouraging. It's Apple after all; the beauty of the perfect marriage between hardware & software to offer such an amazing experience always.

If anyone specifically has the same configuration as my MB & could report; that would be awesome.

Simply because, the upgrade / difference in the higher RAM & the used of SSD makes a world of a difference.
Click to expand...

You need to go ahead and upgrade your RAM. It will cost you under $50 to upgrade to 8GB and the difference will make your computer feel like a new one.
 
UltimaKilo said:
You need to go ahead and upgrade your RAM. It will cost you under $50 to upgrade to 8GB and the difference will make your computer feel like a new one.
Click to expand...

Really?
Because I'm Looking for a 2x4gb pc-8500 and I can't find it at that price.
Found a good deal on corsair but don't work. Now I'm afraid others won't work unless is "mac compatible", and that, my friend, goes almost for 100 USD. btw 1333 Mhz are cheaper then 1066 Mhz, wich is what he (and me) has. but if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them :)

On the subject, I have the same Macbook, with 4Gb, and a 250gb ssd upgraded right before a fresh mavericks installation. Can't tell how it would go on a standart hdd, but I can tell you this: If you want to upgrade something, go for a ssd first. Your hdd is probably negotiating the connection at sata1, but your macbook supports sata2 (You must pay attention to the ssd controller, Samsung usually works fine and negotiate at 3Gb, I don't know about the others). My macbook is way faster. Swap file reduced from 4Gb tipicaly to zero, running the same programs as previously (it also could have something to do with mavericks as oposed to mountain lion).
Hope It helps
 
cskalash said:
Really?
Because I'm Looking for a 2x4gb pc-8500 and I can't find it at that price.
Found a good deal on corsair but don't work. Now I'm afraid others won't work unless is "mac compatible", and that, my friend, goes almost for 100 USD. btw 1333 Mhz are cheaper then 1066 Mhz, wich is what he (and me) has. but if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them :)

On the subject, I have the same Macbook, with 4Gb, and a 250gb ssd upgraded right before a fresh mavericks installation. Can't tell how it would go on a standart hdd, but I can tell you this: If you want to upgrade something, go for a ssd first. Your hdd is probably negotiating the connection at sata1, but your macbook supports sata2 (You must pay attention to the ssd controller, Samsung usually works fine and negotiate at 3Gb, I don't know about the others). My macbook is way faster. Swap file reduced from 4Gb tipicaly to zero, running the same programs as previously (it also could have something to do with mavericks as oposed to mountain lion).
Hope It helps
Click to expand...

I purchased it years ago for just over $60 online. Here is the best I could find for you:

http://t.tigerdirect.com/products/7010614
 
brdeveloper said:
Some things I perceived after upgrading that could make you wait further before upgrading from Snow Leopard:

CONS:

1. Preview is better in SL when searching text into PDFs. I disliked the sidebar at left. Besides, it's too large, taking a lot of room from the text you're reading. If you are editing text at left and reading at right, those ~100px are precious in a 13", non-retina screen.

2. If you use Crossover for running sporadic Windows apps, you'll have to wait until they provide a working version for Mavericks. Also, my license is too old for being eligible to upgrade. So, I'll have to learn how to work with the "wine-crossover" package from MacPorts without having a GUI.

Also, some improvements I expected didn't turn into reality. For example, Mail.app could support Exchange ActiveSync, but no - it continues supporting Exchange, but not ActiveSync.

PROS:

On the plus side, you'll get some minutes of battery improvement... as a subjective impression, it appears to work. I feel the battery taking longer to be fully depleted. Also, memory compression can make better use of your RAM memory.

Finder is better than in SL. Now it supports almost everything that TotalFinder addon provided to SL like tabs and showing folders on top/bottom. However, it still lacks cutting files.
Click to expand...

10.7 introduced the cut feature... copy your file "cmd+c", go to your destination and press "cmd+option+v".
 
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