How well would Mountain Lion run on a late 2008 MacBook with 2gb ram?

[jayem1234]

My sister is running 10.5.8 on MacBook and it runs like dog ****. For some reason every task takes a ridiculously long time to perform. I thought maybe since I have 10.8 I could install it on her computer. Will that help it run a little better? Or should I do something else?

 

[benwiggy]

The OS may not be a factor. Personally, I would recommend at least upgrading to Snow Leopard. You'll find a lot of software is starting to require Snow Leopard or higher.
First thing: 2Gb of RAM is probably the limiting factor. It might be worth buying as much as it will take (6 Gb: 1 x 4Gb and 1 x 2Gb modules) and putting that in.

You may have some software eating up all the CPU and memory. Use Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder to see what processes are running, and if anything is hogging. You can sort the columns by CPU% and then Real Mem to see what's the biggest.

Next: how much hard disk space do you have left? You might want to buy an SSD and replace the hard drive. It's quite easy on those MBs: take out the battery, undo some screws, pull out the drive, unscrew it from the caddy, screw the new one onto the caddy, slide it back in, screw up the plate, put the battery back.

 

[madmacfan]

My sister is running 10.5.8 on MacBook and it runs like dog ****. For some reason every task takes a ridiculously long time to perform. I thought maybe since I have 10.8 I could install it on her computer. Will that help it run a little better? Or should I do something else?

The Late 2008 MB will run quite well on ML. I'd personally up the ram to at least 4gb first though. If you're finding the macbook tediously slow in it's current state, you may want to consider getting an ssd as ben has mentioned above. Another thing to note, is that ML will not run PPC apps, so if she has any ppc apps running on 10.5.8, they won't be able to run on ML.