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Stadders

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 28, 2014
11
0
West Country UK
I have a 2009 IMac with 9Gb of RAM and the intel Core 2 Duo chipset. I have a wireless aluninium key board and the old wireless mouse. I am told that my mouse cannot be replaced by the new keyboard or mouse as the computer does not support the right USB level or words to that effect.

Some of the stuff on my mac is 32bit including 2009 Aluminium Wireless Keyboard firmware update
and most of my Microsoft Office stuff - this latter can, I am sure, be updated.

Should I just accept that this is getting close to the end of days for my machine and stay where I am or should I forge on to new heights?
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,682
43,740
I have a wireless aluninium key board and the old wireless mouse. I am told that my mouse cannot be replaced by the new keyboard or mouse as the computer does not support the right USB level or words to that effect.
Why not buy a new mouse and/or keyboard either wireless or wired?
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,279
13,378
OP wrote:
"I have a wireless aluninium key board and the old wireless mouse. I am told that my mouse cannot be replaced by the new keyboard or mouse as the computer does not support the right USB level or words to that effect."

You've been told wrong.
Mr. Flynn has it right in the post above this one.
If the keyboard/mouse you have are giving you problems, just get a NEW keyboard and a NEW mouse (I recommend 3rd-party products, not Apple).

Problems... solved.

But having said that, what version of the OS are you using now?
El Capitan, perhaps?

If the '09 is running on that, and if it's running well, my advice is -- just "stay there".
There's no compelling reason to "go further", if what you currently use is working for you...
 
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SecuritySteve

macrumors 6502a
Jul 6, 2017
951
1,086
California
OP wrote:
"I have a wireless aluninium key board and the old wireless mouse. I am told that my mouse cannot be replaced by the new keyboard or mouse as the computer does not support the right USB level or words to that effect."

You've been told wrong.
Mr. Flynn has it right in the post above this one.
If the keyboard/mouse you have are giving you problems, just get a NEW keyboard and a NEW mouse (I recommend 3rd-party products, not Apple).

Problems... solved.

But having said that, what version of the OS are you using now?
El Capitan, perhaps?

If the '09 is running on that, and if it's running well, my advice is -- just "stay there".
There's no compelling reason to "go further", if what you currently use is working for you...
For now, El Capitan is supported. But if Apple keeps up with their yearly OS cycle, whatever replaces High Sierra this summer will mark El Capitan as EOL, and it will no longer receive updates. If you're going to spend time updating, update to Sierra or High Sierra to be supported for as long as possible.
 

EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,977
12,940
Is it iMac9,1?

https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/?search_keywords=iMac9,1

Also, do you mean 8 GB RAM?

If so the last officially supported OS version is 10.11 El Capitan but 10.12 Sierra runs just fine on it with a patched installer. So when 10.11 is no longer supported (this fall) you can just install 10.12.

Or you could just probably install 10.13. So far it seems 10.13 High Sierra runs fine on it too but we won’t know for sure until summer when 10.13 is fully mature with version 10.13.6 or whatever.

So unless there is some compelling need to upgrade the hardware, I’d just stick with you have with 10.11 and then in the fall upgrade to High Sierra if there are no issues.

The only caveat is that even on El Capitan, an SSD is highly preferred over a hard drive. 10.11 - 10.13 all are slow booters and can lag somewhat with a hard drive. But your 8 GB is usually sufficient, particularly because every version of OS X since 10.9 has supported memory compression.
 
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