OS upgrade? MacBook Pro 17" 2.4ghz (2007)

[moonday]

Hello from a newbie member. I have an old MBP 3.1, A1229, core 2 duo, 2.4ghz, mid/late 2007. Currently running Mavericks OS X 10.9.5 . Runs fine on Mavericks but want advice if I should upgrade to El Capitan? I added memory years ago so that's not an issue. As I understand it, El Capitan would be the highest OS X I can upgrade to. In excellent shape despite just getting a new battery, and the screen is dimming.

My next question will be related to the dim screen...replace the ccfl lamp or buy a whole new top on ebay?

 

[davidmartindale]

As far as the OS goes, my 2007 runs El Capitan fine. Not as well as it does Mavericks but still pretty decent. Though sometimes it is a bit slow on opening programs, or will bog down a bit with a bunch of stuff open. Though it has 4GB of RAM; so if you have 6GB than it probably won't be as much of an issue.

Though from what I have found Mavericks ran close to as well as Snow Leopard on these and that runs amazing just as it did when new, so with that being said, El Capitan does decrease the performance.
[doublepost=1496365945][/doublepost]Also, I think an SSD would help a lot with opening programs and accessing items in Finder. But I haven't tested that as mine still has a 5400RPM HDD.

 

[0002378]

Mine is not much newer than yours (mid 2009), and I recently did an OS upgrade myself. I went from Snow Leopard -> Yosemite. The performance dropped through the floor. I then decided it's time to upgrade the hardware along with the software. I'm getting 8GB of RAM (upgrading from 4GB) and a Samsung 850 EVO SSD.

I'm all for updating your OS, but to be honest, the newer OSs like Yosemite/El Cap/Sierra do require a hardware boost from old systems. So, I'd upgrade to an SSD and max out the RAM if I were you.