Upgrading MacBook 4,1 (2008 model)

[zfleeman]

My girlfriend's MacBook has seen better days, and I'm fixing to upgrade its HDD to an SSD and increase the RAM to 4GB. I know this will be a good performance upgrade, but I'm stuck when it comes to upgrading the OS. I believe she currently runs Leopard, and (as far as I know) the most recent OS she can run is Lion. Will her Intel Core 2 Duo machine with 4GB of RAM be able to handle that big of a jump? My plan was to install Snow Leopard, and then purchase Lion from the Mac App Store. Wait... can you still buy Lion from the Mac App Store, or has it been replaced with Mountain Lion?

Would dropping $140 on the items pictured below along with purchasing Lion be worth the hassle?

(Also, I think I found the right sticks of RAM, but I could be wrong. If I am, which RAM should I purchase?)

 

[Ichabod.]

Looking on the app store, I can't seem to find Lion, but according to Mactracker (http://mactracker.ca), you're correct that it's maximum OS is Lion 10.7(.5).

The 64GB SSD might be small capacity overall, but iFixit has a guide for installing a second HDD in the optical drive bay (if you aren't using optical media much anymore) for more storage.

You're correct with the RAM (200-pin PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 SO-DIMM). This model has a maximum memory capacity of 6GB (4+2), but the 200-pin chips seem to be much more expensive than the 204

The SSD will probably be more worth it, since you can use it in future computers fairly effectively as a boot drive, but the RAM is going to be stuck in that machine (since Apple/everyone else has moved to 204-pin SO-DIMMs)

Btw, this SSD on amazon is $69 for the same model: http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-I...=UTF8&qid=1375654680&sr=8-2&keywords=64gb+ssd

 

[y.very]

call apple and you should be able to buy lion in MAS
if you don't want to replace optical drive with the old HDD then I suggest you add a few more bucks to get at lease 128G SSD
(for example the m4 128g is $104 on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-128GB...TF8&qid=1375766865&sr=8-2&keywords=crucial+m4
)