Older iMac owners: No fears from Mavericks

Piliger

Just want to let people know. I just updated an iMac from Xmas 2007 from Snow Leopard to the latest Mavericks.

I expected it to be slower and give a lot of problems. The truth is it is running as fat .. or even faster. Absolutely brilliant. Great to be a Mac user.

Creamy Goodness

wonder could you stick windows 8 on a 7 year old dell and say the same?

Piliger

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

wonder could you stick windows 8 on a 7 year old dell and say the same?

That would be a very chastening experience

Elessar

There's a mac forum for all us mac heads

Passenger

Have to say that ever since I upgraded to Mavericks when it was released the MacBook (2011) has been noticeably slower, particularly when booting and opening programs.

Colonel Panic

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

wonder could you stick windows 8 on a 7 year old dell and say the same?

Probably?

Try putting Mountain Lion or greater on a 2007 Black Macbook!

FourFourRED

Passenger wrote: »

Have to say that ever since I upgraded to Mavericks when it was released the MacBook (2011) has been noticeably slower, particularly when booting and opening programs.

Get an SSD.

The Black Oil

Aodhagan wrote: »

Get an SSD.

I'm tempted. Early 2008 iMac. HD is 500GB, currently use just under 300GB of space. I had a quick look on Crucial, it recommended a 250GB, so I'd probably need to clear a fair bit of space unless there's a compatible SSD with more space. Anyone?

iirc, my system originally had 10.5, I bought 10.6, skipped 10.7, bought 10.8 and got Mavericks. Don't really have any issues with it. I presume in upgrading you can simply reinstall the OS, your apps and then import your stuff from Time Machine?

Owenw

Just installed a 240Gb SSD in my late 2008 MacBook 5,1 and it made Mavericks a good deal snappier. Photoshop CS6 opens in about 2 secs now.

Swapped out the optical drive for the old system drive - 750Gb for file storage.

Thinking of doubling the RAM to 8Gb in a few months to keep the machine going for another year or two.

Piliger

The Black Oil wrote: »

I presume in upgrading you can simply reinstall the OS, your apps and then import your stuff from Time Machine?

I installed mavericks on top of snow leopard ... It all happens automatically .. Apps stay in their right place as does everything else and off I went.

tritium

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

wonder could you stick windows 8 on a 7 year old dell and say the same?

Put windows 8 on a 2009 laptop and pretty happy with the performance improvement. Only about 6 rather than 7 years but tbh hardware doesn't update half as fast as it used to

Passenger

Owenw wrote: »

Just installed a 240Gb SSD in my late 2008 MacBook 5,1 and it made Mavericks a good deal snappier. Photoshop CS6 opens in about 2 secs now.

Swapped out the optical drive for the old system drive - 750Gb for file storage.

Thinking of doubling the RAM to 8Gb in a few months to keep the machine going for another year or two.

How did the installation process go for you?

Owenw

Installing the drives was very straight-forward following a video on YouTube. I picked up an optical drive bay adapter to fit the HDD from OWC but you can get cheaper ones on amazon or eBay.

I downloaded Mavericks and a free app called Lion DiskMaker to made a boot drive using a USB stick to install a clean copy of OS X 10.9.

Then I used the Migration Assistant in the Applications/Utilities folder to copy files , apps and settings across from the old Hdd.

The only problem I ran into was copying iTunes media across. There are convoluted ways to keep play counts etc. but I wasn't bothered with that. Copied media to a USB drive from my old user account and will copy it to the 2nd HDD after I format it.

The Black Oil

Piliger wrote: »

I installed mavericks on top of snow leopard ... It all happens automatically .. Apps stay in their right place as does everything else and off I went.

To clarify, you added your fresh SSD - installed SL and then Mavericks? I keep thinking I'll have to start with Leopard (what came with the system originally) in order to keep the iLife stuff. I don't mind if I have to redo all that, it'll take a few hours. However, if Migration Assistant can shunt all this stuff across (Office, etc) that's fine. I've used it once before, my memory is a little foggy.

If buying an SSD, do I need some sort of 2.5" bracket? Re changing the optical drive for old system drive, that would interest me as well, though I still kinda have a use for discs/DVDs.

This is what came up when I checked for something matching my model on Crucial. Is this one also compatible..

My current boot time is about 75 seconds.

FourFourRED

My boot time on a 2011 13" MacBook Pro is 20 seconds with the Samsung 830 (128GB). Applications boot ranges from 1-5 seconds at most.

Piliger

The Black Oil wrote: »

To clarify, you added your fresh SSD - installed SL and then Mavericks? I keep thinking I'll have to start with Leopard (what came with the system originally) in order to keep the iLife stuff. I don't mind if I have to redo all that, it'll take a few hours. However, if Migration Assistant can shunt all this stuff across (Office, etc) that's fine. I've used it once before, my memory is a little foggy.

If buying an SSD, do I need some sort of 2.5" bracket? Re changing the optical drive for old system drive, that would interest me as well, though I still kinda have a use for discs/DVDs.

This is what came up when I checked for something matching my model on Crucial. Is this one also compatible..

My current boot time is about 75 seconds.

I mistakenly didn't pay attention to the SSD part Sorry. I was just referring to a normal upgrade process ....

The Black Oil

Ah, it's grand. I've ordered the SSD and a bracket anyway. Have done a fair bit of searching on what to do on the software/OS/apps/data side...not sure, will try to figure it out.

The Black Oil

Arrived today. Pretty impressive considering it was Patrick's Day yesterday.