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View Full Version : Updgrading OSX from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion on early 2008 MacBook?



Tradd
9-23-12, 2:48pm
A question for you Apple fans:

I have an early 2008 13" MacBook (aka the one with the removable battery). It's just the base model. No memory or anything added. I'm running Snow Leopard. I've been thinking about upgrading to Mountain Lion, but wondering if it's worth it with this old of a MacBook. My MacBook still works fine, if a little slow (if I have Firefox open, as well as a word processing document on LibreOffice, it's not uncommon to get the spinning beachball). About half of the memory on my hard drive is available.

I think the upgrade is only $20 or. Worth it or wasting my money?

Thanks!

ETA: well, forget that idea. My model MacBook isn't supported for Mountain Lion.

fidgiegirl
9-23-12, 3:44pm
Thanks for coming back to tell us!!

I didn't know how it would work to skip hop over Lion, anyway.

fidgiegirl
9-23-12, 3:45pm
Is LibreOffice like Open Office? We have tried it but I found that my $9.99 for Pages has been well worth it. I would not, however, buy Microsoft Office for my personal machine.

Tradd
9-23-12, 5:56pm
Is LibreOffice like Open Office? We have tried it but I found that my $9.99 for Pages has been well worth it. I would not, however, buy Microsoft Office for my personal machine.

I tried The Apple equivalent to MS Office package when I first got the Mac and Numbers, the spreadsheet app made me insane. I was so used to Excel, that Numbers made no sense to me for even simple spreadsheets. Pages, on the otherhand, is OK. I love LibreOffice. It's the successor to OpenOffice. There was something that happened with the people behind OO, so they continued with LO in a different umbrella group. OO is no longer supported, to my knowledge. The LO spreadsheet is very similar to Excel, so it rarely makes me nuts. ;)

Tradd
9-23-12, 5:57pm
Thanks for coming back to tell us!!

I didn't know how it would work to skip hop over Lion, anyway.

Lion isn't supported for my MacBook model either!

SteveinMN
9-23-12, 10:14pm
I love LibreOffice. It's the successor to OpenOffice. There was something that happened with the people behind OO, so they continued with LO in a different umbrella group. OO is no longer supported, to my knowledge. The LO spreadsheet is very similar to Excel, so it rarely makes me nuts. ;)
Open Office passed into Oracle's hands a couple of years ago, which kind of marked the end of OO as most people knew it. It since has been "donated" to the Apache Software Foundation, which will shepherd its further development. <-- probably more than anyone wanted to know :)

Another option for Mac users is NeoOffice (http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php), from Planamesa. I've been using it for several years now on my Mac, along with Microsoft Office for Windows at work, and I did not find it hard to move my skills and files between the two. I also think NeoOffice's interface is more Mac-like than OO or LO. The suite download is free, but they do ask for periodic contributions for updates so they can fund their work -- about $10 a year. Avoiding the invasiveness and bloat of Microsoft on my Mac is well worth $10 a year to me.

fidgiegirl
9-23-12, 10:37pm
Huh. We'll have to try those out. Obviously I have not kept up with the times bc I still have OO!

Tradd, that Powerbook doesn't seem that old . . . but one thing I'm noticing with Apple products, and I'm a diehard here so it pains me to say this, is that they are becoming obsolete much more quickly. My coworkers with first generation iPads just die when they see what the newest generation can do. All part of the technology game, I suppose. :(

And 2008 is four years . . . could it already have been four years since 2008?! Say it ain't so.

Tradd
9-23-12, 10:53pm
Huh. We'll have to try those out. Obviously I have not kept up with the times bc I still have OO!

Tradd, that Powerbook doesn't seem that old . . . but one thing I'm noticing with Apple products, and I'm a diehard here so it pains me to say this, is that they are becoming obsolete much more quickly. My coworkers with first generation iPads just die when they see what the newest generation can do. All part of the technology game, I suppose. :(

And 2008 is four years . . . could it already have been four years since 2008?! Say it ain't so.

It's not a Powerbook, it's a MacBook! ;-) Mine is actually 4.5 years old since I got it in early 2008.

You want to know what's really horrible - MS Office 2010. Since I had one of the oldest computers in the office, I was recently upgraded to a brand new Windows desktop. In addition to the better dual monitors I got (I had ones that were 7+ years old!), I now have Windows 7. Since that's on the small Windows laptop I also have, that's OK. MS Office needs to be flushed! Every setting is buried. It takes me twice as long to do everything, even printing, since there's some danged setting (that I can't figure out how to get rid of), makes me hit "edit" to even be able to print on every single attachment.