Upgrading slow 2007 macbook worth it?

[UpdatingPB]

Hello everyone,

I have a 2007 white macbook (C2D 2.1 GHz) running 10.5 leopard. It has a 120 GB HDD which has been neary full for quite a while now (not really an issue as I plan to purchase an external HDD anyway). It's also annoyingly slow (I use it for music, browsing, and office (word, excel, powerpoint) for mac 2008). I recently upgraded the RAM from 1 to 2 GB, I didn't notice any effect..

Now I have 2 questions..

1. What is causing my macbook to be so slow?
-Is it the nearly full HDD?
-Still a lack of RAM? (even though 1-->2GB did not yield much effect)
-The old CPU?
-The fact that I am still running 10.5 leopard?

2. What do I do? Is there one upgrade that is going to make my macbook run significantly faster, and if there is, is it worth it?
-Will a larger HDD (which would always be half empty) make it faster?
-Even more RAM?
-An OSX upgrade?
-Would it be worth it to put an SSD in there (I'd go for a 120 Gb model) or will it be bottlenecked by CPU/RAM etc?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bear]

OS X likes to have at least 10 percent of the system disk free, so a larger disk could help there.

Even more ram would help.

Upgrading to Snow Leopard would probably help also. You should still be able to find a copy from Amazon.

SSD would help somewhat. but remember you need enough free space toy keep the OS happy.

However, if you can afford it, it might be time to get a new (or Apple refurbished) 13" MacBook Pro. AFter all, the upgrades do add up and a new computer will be a lot faster overall.

 

[Medic278]

Well your machine is 5 years old. If it is still serving you well then maybe its worth upgrading if you love it. Me personally I would not upgrade a 5 year old machine, I would try to sell it and look at getting a new or reufrb MBP. For a 5 year old machine apple is going to be dropping software support for them and they will be obsolete in the near future, any money you would spend on upgrades and save it for the purchase of a new machine. However if you want to upgrade while you look I would not put an SSD in. I believe that your MB would need a SATA II while current MBP are SATAIII are therefore your SSD would not be compatible with your new machine.