Mid 2007 Macbook Pro w/ Mountain Lion - Thoughts?

[mattmikulla]

I have recently upgraded to a Retina MBP but am giving my old mid 2007 MBP to my girlfriend.

I'm wondering if any of you have or plan to install Mountain Lion on a mid 2007 MBP.

Thoughts? Problems?

 

[Badrottie]

436 read and no reply???

 

[freeskier989]

I upgraded my mid 2007 17" MBP yesterday, from SL to ML, took a bit of time, but seems to upgraded fine. I too also upgraded to a Retina, so i dont know if its because im used to the new computer, but i can really feel the slow down when on the 2007. Seems to be a bit faster, but everything works fine, seems to be a successful upgrade.

 

[dwman]

Was trying to decide the same thing myself. I have a 2007 MBP with Lion and a new HDD/SSD hybrid which makes the machine run pretty fast. Not sure I want to risk bogging it down with ML.

 

[Yugami]

I've been running Lion since it came out. I upgraded my stock HD which had had a fresh install of SL, and I vaguely recall having some performance issues.

I bought a SSD around the same time and installed Lion onto it fresh, and my comp has been running great (15" 2.2 Ghz). My SSD is only 90 Gigs, and I have 28 partitioned to Windows...so it filled up quick. I was experiencing some brief lockups and decided to purge my hard drive to give my self some free space, and ended up having to do a disk repair to get the lockups to stop. Running awesomely now. Super quick boots and still performs damn well graphically (these nvidia 8600Ms are boss! Too bad I needed the logic board replaced several times...). I would say the main downfall is having lots of tabs and programs open (memory....).

I would have already upgraded to Mountain Lion, and I would be tempted to do a fresh install, but I kinda want to just find somebody that has it so I dont have to pay! Also, I am planning to buy 8 gigs of memory from amazon as I've found it for $120 (prices seemed to be REALLY high, and $120 still is compared to DDR3, but it has good reviews and $120 is kinda worth it for 2->8 gigs). I've read a lot about how our comp supposedly only supports 6 gigs, but I don't believe in mixing different sizes of DDR; they should go as a pair! I've also read some recent reports of people successfully installing 8 gigs.

My mac is still going strong, but it has been through a LOT...dead right case fan, intermittent keyboard/trackpad connection, bong spill on keyboard, messed up new keyboard connector, dropped and broke the CD drive (Jap's replaced it for free when I had logic board issue), wires popping out of power magnet, melted third party power adapter, dead battery, weirdly performing third party battery, single pixel width discolored line at edge of screen (still have it, o well). I love this thing though.

 

[ms99]

I also have an older 2007 MBP (Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1) running SL with 2GB of ram and am thinking of upgrading to ML.

I have a 240GB SSD and 4GB of memory coming from OWC and will install those hw upgrades prior to loading ML.

Hoping to squeeze a few more years out of what has been the best laptop I have owned.

Anyone know if ML is good on MBP3,1 machines?


Mike

 

[proximo]

The mid to late 2007 MBP runs ML great. I had already upgraded the memory to 6GB (yes, these machines can support an undocumented 4GB + 2GB DIMM configuration) which might have helped.

The only real downside is the lack of gestures on the trackpad. Since Lion, OS X has really assumed gestures for things like Mission Control that are hard to do without. These days the 2007 is stationary so I have a magic trackpad right next to it.

EDIT: well, I have to retract that last comment. Using ctrl and the cursor keys, it's quite easy to move around Mission Control without gestures.

I also have an older 2007 MBP (Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1) running SL with 2GB of ram and am thinking of upgrading to ML.

I have a 240GB SSD and 4GB of memory coming from OWC and will install those hw upgrades prior to loading ML.

Hoping to squeeze a few more years out of what has been the best laptop I have owned.

Anyone know if ML is good on MBP3,1 machines?


Mike

 

[Idgit]

Wifi bug kills Airplay and TM on MBPro 3,1 (2007)

There is a very bad wifi bug with MacBook Pro 3,1 (Mid-2007). If you use Time Machine or Airplay over wifi, don't upgrade.

Essentially, Airplay and Time Machine won't work over wifi on MBPro's (mid-2007) running Mountain Lion. The transmit rate drops to virtually nothing.

Hopefully Apple doesn't neglect this model and comes out with a bug fix.

Other than that, Mountain Lion seems fine. It feels faster than Lion, but I've encountered some flakey behaviour with the Finder: occasional beachballs. I think Lion and Mountain Lion aren't well optimized for "old school" spinning platter hard drives.

 

[tygrubb]

Mid 2007 17" MBP 2.4GHZ with 4 GB RAM and new OWC SSD runs ML excellently. It feels like a new machine to me after the SSD upgrade. Graphics/animations almost on par with Snow Leopard. Highlights just how un-optimized Lion was.

 

[Badrottie]

after upgrade ML 10.8 (not clean install) last night all I can say not very much and not really smooth experience. It is more like Lion to me.

 

[ms99]

Got my new OWC SSD plugged into the machine and it is running a bit faster.

One major irritant - MS Office 2010 is now demanding the Product Key to start up the programs. Only trouble is the email with the key is in Outlook which I now cannot access...

I cloned the disk using the Mac Disk Utility program (took a few hours) and everything else appears to be working good, except of course the Micro$oft Office programs. Now would be a good time to dump it but of course I have years of email I can't loose. Guess someway MS is keying the license off the harddrive used.

Anyone know of a way to recover a Product Key to use Outlook again?

Also my MBP is currently running SL, can I directly upgrade to ML or do I need to do Lion first then ML?


Mike

 

[ms99]

Found a way to recover the MS Office Key.

Copied the Microsoft User Data -> Office 2011 Identities folder over to my iMac that also has a copy of Office 2011.

And was then able to open the email with the product key.

 

[teetotaler]

Upgrade from Leopard -> Mountain Lion

Was running Leopard on my old (mid-2007) MacBook Pro, recently swapped out the old HDD for an SSD.

I tried upgrading directly to Mountain Lion but that option was not available. So, I went ahead and cloned my "Macintosh HD" (with Leopard) onto another HDD using "Carbon Copy Cloner" (available as a free download). This creates a bootable clone you can use to start up your system which will also help in the migration.

After that I formatted the internal SSD "Macintosh HD" using Disk Utility in the install disk and when ahead with "Mountain Lion" install. When the newly installed OS booted up I chose the option to migrate from another disk, in this case my cloned disk with the old Leopard install.

It managed to get almost everything off there except a few apps like "VMWare Fusion" that needed an upgrade to a new version.

All my contact, calendars, bookmarks and app settings etc seemed to have made it across fine.

If you're already done with the install you can still pull in your data by opening the "Migration Assistant" app and get the data from your cloned disk with older OS on it.

Will update this thread if I encounter any issues.

 

[Planner Dude]

Sorry for the Zombie Thread! 2g RAM Question

I'd like to use splashtop to connect my 2007 mbp to my new HTPC Macmini while my family watches cable tv, but I need ML to do so....

Do you think the mbp can run ML on 2gn of RAM? I really don't feel like spending $45-$60for a RAM upgrade to do this.....

$20 for ML is worth it though....

 

[Hello...]

I'd like to use splashtop to connect my 2007 mbp to my new HTPC Macmini while my family watches cable tv, but I need ML to do so....

Do you think the mbp can run ML on 2gn of RAM? I really don't feel like spending $45-$60for a RAM upgrade to do this.....

$20 for ML is worth it though....

Runs great on 2g of ram.

 

[TyPod]

I ran ML on my 2008 MBP with 2GB RAM for a bit and it worked great. You should be fine!