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Leopard or Snow Leopard on old Mini?

S

shoebobs

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 5, 2008
241
105
My friend is selling me his old 1st Gen intel mini basically for free. It's not very powerful: 1.5GHZ core solo, 1GB Ram.

I am planning on putting an SSD in it and ugprading it to 2GB Ram. I'm not going to upgrade the processor to core duo unless I can find one for real cheap, such as from a laptop that someone is throwing away due to faulty display/logic board/whatever.

So, after the upgrades it will have a 1.5GHZ Core Solo, 2GB Ram and an SSD. Should I put Leopard or Snow Leopard on it? I know the focus of Snow Leopard was to make the OS run better, but are those performance gains going to be only seen on multi-core processor systems? Would this system see any significant performance loss if Snow Leopard was on it?

I am just going to be using this for basic internet browsing and perhaps iTunes. Let me know what you think.

Thanks
 
For "basic internet browsing and perhaps iTunes" I wouldn't put any additional money into it. The hard disk it already has, the 1GB of RAM, and probably the OS X Tiger that came with it will be fine. If you must buy an OS, Snow Leopard will at least have a smaller disk footprint.
 
talmy said:
For "basic internet browsing and perhaps iTunes" I wouldn't put any additional money into it. The hard disk it already has, the 1GB of RAM, and probably the OS X Tiger that came with it will be fine. If you must buy an OS, Snow Leopard will at least have a smaller disk footprint.
Click to expand...

I should have clarified that I have a spare SSD and 2GB Ram laying around that I am going to use. I also have retail discs of both Leopard and Snow Leopard so I am not putting any extra money into it.

I didn't think of the smaller footprint for Snow Leopard, but that may be the deciding factor unless anybody else knows of any performance issues I may see. The SSD I plan on using is only 40GB so I will want to save as much space as possible.
 
shoebobs said:
I should have clarified that I have a spare SSD and 2GB Ram laying around that I am going to use. I also have retail discs of both Leopard and Snow Leopard so I am not putting any extra money into it.

I didn't think of the smaller footprint for Snow Leopard, but that may be the deciding factor unless anybody else knows of any performance issues I may see. The SSD I plan on using is only 40GB so I will want to save as much space as possible.
Click to expand...

Snow Leopard is also just generally a better OS than Leopard is. Better performance in most cases, a bit more polish, fewer bugs.
 
no performance issues, and smaller footprint. i'd also vote for SL.

lurk on ebay for the cpu, i've seen several T2400/T2600 chips for $25 or less and would make a hell of a difference over the solo chip. best of luck.
 
I have a core solo mini with Snow Leopard and I am happy with the performance. I have 2GB ram as well and an upgraded HD.
 
Snow Leopard is the way to go as it's better supported.

However, I wouldn't advise putting much money or effort into a single core, 32 bit machine. It might be better to sell it while you can still get some cash for it and get a new 2010 Mini or a refurbished 2009 unit.

My hunch is that Mac OS/X 10.7 is going to be Intel 64 bit, multiple core only and likely to come with a 4 GM RAM minimum requirement for decent performance. Apple is your friend only if your hardware is less than three years old. They can be an acquaintance if it's less than seven years old. More than that, tough luck.
 
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