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Some questions for Lion users

S

SirStrumalot

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 28, 2011
391
4
Minneapolis, MN
So I'm debating making the switch after getting my 4S. I would really appreciate some opinions on the following:

  1. Will installing Lion get rid of my applications?
  2. Can I install Lion without disrupting my Windows 7 partition?
  3. Are you really having trouble with your WiFi?
  4. Does it really lag a lot compared to SL?
  5. Is the RAM usage that much worse than SL?
I'm a little conflicted because I've heard so many bad things about it but I'm wondering why Apple would deploy it on all their own systems in their stores if it was that unreliable with simple things such as WiFi :confused:
 
1. If they are not lion compatible then yes.
2. I believe so but I can't comment from experience on this.
3. No, this is the first I heard of this.
4. No
5. No, but i do have 4GB on my old MBP (4yrs old) and 8GB on my iMac (2yrs old)

Hope this helps.
 
Will installing Lion get rid of my applications?
No, but Rosetta applications will not work under Lion.

Can I install Lion without disrupting my Windows 7 partition?
You should be able to, though I have not tried this.

Are you really having trouble with your WiFi?
Not since the first update to Lion.

Does it really lag a lot compared to SL?
Not for me, but it depends on your computer's specs.

Is the RAM usage that much worse than SL?
Definitely. I recommend at LEAST 4GB of RAM before upgrading. In my experience, Safari and iTunes and Mail all use the most RAM.

Power users should probably not convert, but personally I prefer Lion. I have Lion installed, and SL on an external HD for compatibility reasons (Rosetta). This is what I recommend, or if your internal is large enough, then just have a partition on your main drive for SL before you upgrade.
 
For the windows question, I had a bit of issues at the beginning because I tested lion on its own partition before upgrading, and also lion creating a recovery drive juggled drive list order. Boot camp booted fine, but my problems were with vmware fusion, which was up an running after I deleted previous preferences and reran the fusion setup.

So overall, my bootcamp partition seems completely unaffected.
 
RAM.

I have a 27" BTO 2011 iMac with 16GB RAM running 10.7.2 and upon startup, iStat reports that out of 16GB I have 14GB free. That means the OS is using around 2GB all to itself. Once I open all of my apps and I run all of my normal processes, I see another 2GB being used. Anything more intensive, I'll see my iMac use almost 50% of that 16GB.

With all that, said, max out your RAM if you can. It's usually a better computing experience if you do.
 
Thanks for the responses guys. They're very helpful. That's crazy about the RAM... I have 4GB right now, but it seems like Lion would not run optimally with that much?

Oh I just remembered, but does Lion play nice with Time Machine backups?
 
4GB of RAM is plenty for Lion. No reason to upgrade unless other apps you use would demand it. I did upgrade to 8GB because I use Keynote and other apps with very large files that were running slow, but Lion didn't have any effect on that. It should actually be better managing RAM than OS X was before, although it was already good before.

jW
 
SirStrumalot said:
Thanks for the responses guys. They're very helpful. That's crazy about the RAM... I have 4GB right now, but it seems like Lion would not run optimally with that much?

Oh I just remembered, but does Lion play nice with Time Machine backups?
Click to expand...

Mal said:
4GB of RAM is plenty for Lion. No reason to upgrade unless other apps you use would demand it. I did upgrade to 8GB because I use Keynote and other apps with very large files that were running slow, but Lion didn't have any effect on that. It should actually be better managing RAM than OS X was before, although it was already good before.

jW
Click to expand...


Like Mal said, 4GB should be plenty just for Lion and normal everyday use. However, if you're like me and have 10 apps open at a time with heavy usage and have an average uptime of 10+ days without a restart, then definitely invest in more RAM. What you can do now is install Lion and see how it goes for you. If you notice that you're paging out a lot and your Mac is running slower than normal, then consider upgrading your RAM.

As for Time Machine, I haven't used Time Machine on Lion yet, bad habit not backing up I know, but others on here have said it works just fine.
 
Time Machine works great in Lion but I could not continue backing up to the same backup file after upgrading and transferring my old settings and apps over. I had to start a new backup.
 
SirStrumalot said:
  1. Will installing Lion get rid of my applications?
  2. Can I install Lion without disrupting my Windows 7 partition?
  3. Are you really having trouble with your WiFi?
  4. Does it really lag a lot compared to SL?
  5. Is the RAM usage that much worse than SL?
Click to expand...

1. no
2. yes
3. no
4. no
5. no

I upgraded to lion yesterday for iCloud support in combination with my IP4 and iPad. My macbook runs faster than it did with SL - no lag, efficient memory use, no change in temps.

I would highly recommend upgrading to Lion, the combination of Lion + IOS5 + iCloud is awesome!

edit - I have 4GB RAM and its fine.
 
concur with everything adnoh posted, and would add this following comment from a post from another thread:

Four oF NINE said:
I'm feeling a bit charmed, I just upgraded to Lion, and have encountered none of the problems so many others have reported..

One of the big changes is with Mac Mail, if you use that, new format is great.. Also, there's a few other cosmetic changes, and the part where what you typed is read back to you is kind of weird, especially so for me coming on the heels of my Siri equipped iPhone..

The scroll feature now works 'backwards', that's going to take some getting used to, but

The number one reason I recommend upgrading is for the security upgrades, that alone makes it worthwhile to me.
Click to expand...
 
kappaknight said:
Time Machine works great in Lion but I could not continue backing up to the same backup file after upgrading and transferring my old settings and apps over. I had to start a new backup.
Click to expand...
Could you do a restore from your old backup though?

Thanks for all the help guys. I think I'll wait for 10.7.3 and then make the upgrade.
 
lion sucks hard, bunch of unknowing/un-power-computing fan-people here on MR. Go read Apple's own forums—more truth there than here.
 
I'm a power user, I'm currently working on my Computer Science dissertation which is using OpenCL. I have no problem with Lion, it works perfectly for me.

Being derogatory to people by calling them "un power using" is such an idiotic statement.

Lion does not use more RAM no, it appears to cache a lot more but that isn't actual wasted RAM, the OS can request the cache back if it needs more memory. Pretty bored of reading comments like "it uses more RAM" when it actually doesn't, it's just smarter about what it uses.
 
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