To update or not to update?

[comda]

Hello fellow mac enthusiasts!

I am the proud owner of a 2007 White Core 2 Duo macbook.. Had it since boxing day '07! I love it. It was my first laptop and as a 18 year old today i still cherish the damn thing almost 7 years later, because its always worked for me and I've had very minimal issues with it.

Since new, I've already put in some upgrades into it. Here is what it was stock and to the right the upgrades:

Macbook 2007 White
model identifier 3,1

Core 2 Duo @ 2.2ghz
1GB DDR2 ram------------------->4gb DDR2 RAm
120gb HDD----------------------->750GB seagate barracuda Hard drive
Leopard (10.5.8)-----------------> Dual boot Snow leopard & Win 7

Here is what i would like to know..

Is it worth my time and money to upgrade this machine to the last OS apple says it can run, that being osx lion 10.7 or is 10.8 or 10.9 able to run on it? I hear people talking about installing maverick and mountain lion on "unsupported macs"

I currently use the machine for school, in my last year of highschool and would like to take it to university with me..... as i still get about 2 hours on the battery. (battery health 58 according to istat pro. ) I mainly use office, garageband, Flash, Photoshop and illustrator.

But do i need the upgrade? i had to upgrade it to Snow leopard last year cause apple pulled the plug on leopard. But i've heard that lion isn't that great and that its "apples vista" (not my opinion, just what ive been hearing) and would just like to know if my machine will handle it.. im comfortable about running fine but my GPU. Its only the intel GMA X3100 144mb Vram. Thats the only reason apple cut this machine at 10.7 according to toms hardware and apple.ca. The macbook pro using the same CPU but better GPU can run maverick. Apparently.

So mainly wanna know.. do i need this $20 lion upgrade just yet, will it run decently on my laptop given i cant afford a new one i wanna stretch this ones life and is Lion actually that bad as its portrayed or is it just another example of false information. Please let me know your opinion. Thank you.

 

[mojolicious]

Moj's 3th Rule of Computing states:

If your Mac is not officially upgradable to Mavericks then stick with Snow Leopard, because Mac OS X 10.6.8 is a shining jewel in Apple's crown.

Lion and Mountain Lion were both betas on the way to Mavericks.

 

[0007776]

10.6.8 was a good OS, keep it until you either upgrade your computer or need to run a program that won't support it. Likely those will both happen at the same time assuming your computer keeps working.

 

[comda]

Moj's 3th Rule of Computing states:

Snow Leopard, because Mac OS X 10.6.8 is a shining jewel in Apple's crown.

.

OK. thats good. so you think that SL will be supported as long as XP? lool.

 

[0007776]

OK. thats good. so you think that SL will be supported as long as XP? lool.

Most likely Snow Leopard has another year or two of support from Apple.

 

[Weaselboy]

OK. thats good. so you think that SL will be supported as long as XP? lool.

Apple has not said anything officially, but the last couple security updates here did not include Snow Leopard versions. So Snow Leopard is done for it would appear.

Nothing stopping you from running it without the security updates if that does not bother you I suppose.

 

[DoNoHarm]

Please let me know your opinion. Thank you.

I recently downgraded my mid 2009 MBP from Maverics to Lion. Even though technically i can run maverics, the machine ran hot. It's less hot with lion. Lion was basically the earliest "full" version of OSX with filevault, otherwise I would have gone with snow leopard.

 

[comda]

Well i should probably update this. Last week i made an investment into a 240gb kingston ssd. And installed lion. I saw immediately massive loss of speed even with the ssd. Internet pages loaded slowly even after updating to 10.7.5. Its sad cause my girlfriend has an i7 with lion and my macbook with a c2d is faster. But after a day with lion i returned back to snow leo and shall stay with it.

 

[macmesser]

Well i should probably update this. Last week i made an investment into a 240gb kingston ssd. And installed lion. I saw immediately massive loss of speed even with the ssd. Internet pages loaded slowly even after updating to 10.7.5. Its sad cause my girlfriend has an i7 with lion and my macbook with a c2d is faster. But after a day with lion i returned back to snow leo and shall stay with it.

I wouldn't update unless you need to. For basic usage keep what you have. I noticed a speed hit in my 09 Macbook when I upgraded to 10.7.5.

ps- Didn't read the whole thread before I posted. I see you learned the hard way. Bummer.