Mac OS upgrade - is it worth it?

agrinnall

I'm a PC user who knows very little about Macs, I'm asking this on behalf of my neighbour who has used a Mac for years but still knows less than I do .

The Mac dates from 2006 and has an Intel dual core processer running OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger I believe). There are a few things that it can't do any more as a more recent OS is required. I've investigated upgrading and it appears that it's technically possible to go straight to Snow Leopard fairly cheaply (the CD is £26 in the Apple Store) even though it's breaking the licence rules. The question I have is whether it's really worth bothering, or would it be better to use the machine as it is until they hit issues that cause them a big problem then buy a new one with Lion, or whatever is current by then, already on it? Are there any significant benefits of moving from Tiger?

InsideInsurance

For the sake of £25 its hard to say its not worth it but make sure there arent any old Mac 9 applications they're using and look into drivers for scanner and printers that were dropped when 10.6 was released.

There are plenty forums discussing if to move from Tiger to Leopard and Snow Leopard was 95% a behind the scenes upgrade hence the ultra low price.

agrinnall

Thanks II, I'll suggest to them that they give it some thought, although they'll also need to buy an external hard drive as from what I've seen the cleanest way to do it requires a format of the internal hard drive (they should of course already have one to do back ups but I'm sure you know what technophobes are like......)

I did see something that suggests Apple now have a policy of cheap OS upgrades as Lion is also low cost, at least compared to a new version of Windows.

InsideInsurance

You have to remember Apple sell hardware as well as software and OS's.

Microsoft don't sell hardware

John_Gray

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Microsoft don't sell hardware

Not apart from keyboards, mice, webcams...
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us

(OK, no PCs or laptops!)

notatvstar

... um not sure if this helps, but recently upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and now my bluetooth mouse is scrolling the wrong way around.

Hammyman

Snow Leopard is a definite worthwhile upgrade, if for no other reason than you'll find less and less software will run on older versions. Leopard to Lion is a different thing.

Hammyman

notatvstar wrote: »

... um not sure if this helps, but recently upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and now my bluetooth mouse is scrolling the wrong way around.

So you're completely oblivious to the massively reported fact that in Lion the default scrolling direction was reversed and you can change it back in System Preferences?

Hammyman

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Microsoft don't sell hardware

Xbox, Xbox 360, Microsoft Kinect, Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Keyboard....

chunkychocky

notatvstar wrote: »

... um not sure if this helps, but recently upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and now my bluetooth mouse is scrolling the wrong way around.

They've done that deliberately so that it mimics a touch screen so you scroll in the same direction as you would if your finger was on the screen. You can change it back to the old-fashioned way, as my hubby did it for me on his laptop as it drove me bonkers, but I'm not sure which menu you need to go into.

Scrilla

Hammyman wrote: »

Snow Leopard is a definite worthwhile upgrade, if for no other reason than you'll find less and less software will run on older versions. Leopard to Lion is a different thing.

Snow Leopard was also a release where very few 'new features' were introduced because the focus was on optimisation. For anyone running OSx, Snow Leopard is a must have in this respect because it will feel snappier™ :A