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macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
694
56
Orange County, CA
Hey gang,

I have an iMac Core Duo (not C2D) 1.83 GHz with 2 GB RAM. I'm pretty happy with the speed under Leopard, which is remarkable considering the computer is over 3.5 years old.

Anyway, I was thinking of upgrading to Snow Leopard but didn't want to do it if there'd be a noticeable performance hit. Sometimes you upgrade an OS and all of a sudden your computer feels sluggish. What's your experience with upgrading to Snow Leopard?

Thanks!
 
If your iMac is running flawlessly with leopard OS - I would keep it in leopard.

I used to be a fan of Apple updates till I had my BlackBook crash from a software update less than a year ago. I know this is different, as you are doing an upgrade in OS, but I would be cautious, and keep it the way you have it - since you sound pretty happy with it.

On the whole, SL does not add that many features that I find convincing to adopt my 24" dual-core iMac with, so I am in the same boat with you in this case. It runs leopard, and still kicks arse, and I have had it for close to 3 years now. At work, I have the new 21.5" iMac with SL, and it is a great machine as well. But, overall my 24' iMac running Leopard can do anything the new 21.5" iMac can, so be careful if you do choose get SL, because there have been some problems with SL. One Big thing for me, is CS3 not being supported by SL. I still use CS3 over CS4, and will not get away from CS3 till CS5 debuts. So, if you do have CS3 programs, be even more careful. ;)

With most things in life & especially Apple products, I live by... "if ain't broken, don't fix it!"
 
I'm in a similar boat. I have a 24" iMac 2.66G.
I upgraded my MacBook to SL. I had some problems with iMovie & iDVD. So I very hesitant.
Also I use Parallels 5 on my iMac, so again hesitant.

Is there any difference between Parallels 5 on SL vs Leopard?

I believe in "don't fix if it ain't broke" too.
 
If you have 2GB or more of RAM go for it, otherwise you're better off with Leopard.

Snow will function on 1GB, to work well it needs 2.
 
I'm in a similar boat. I have a 24" iMac 2.66G.
I upgraded my MacBook to SL. I had some problems with iMovie & iDVD. So I very hesitant.
Also I use Parallels 5 on my iMac, so again hesitant.

Is there any difference between Parallels 5 on SL vs Leopard?

I believe in "don't fix if it ain't broke" too.

Parallels 5 is designed for Snow Leopard.
 
We loved Leopard. It was very fast and unbelievably stable.

Got SL, it was slightly faster yet everything crashed.

10.6.2 Came out and the crashes seem to have vanished.

So I can say that SL is worth getting and is a good OS>

However, for an older computer like yours, there's really no point to it, unless you want a tiny speed boost and to get back a few Gigs on your hard disk.
 
I upgraded my early 2006 iMac to Snow Leopard and love it. No crashes, no issues, just blazing fast performance. It was money well spent!

Bryan
 
Though I have not yet tried 10.6.2, i did however update to SL when it first came out on my core2duo and had nothing but crashes. i am currently back on Leopard but i will try 10.6.2 eventually. Not really any help here but that's my 2 cents.
 
Heck, I am still running tiger on my 24 inch imac and dont plan on upgrading. It's just as fast as when I first got it. As was said before, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
 
When I first got Snow Leopard, many of the apps crashed including Safari, E-Mail and iMovie.

The problem was that my account on the iMac was corrupted. The solution was simple. I created a new account and moved my data over (not using migration assistant). Now everything screems and no crashes at all.

Nobody should be afraid of Snow Leopard. It works great as long as certain steps are taken. Either do a clean install or create a new account and move your data over manually. I think many of the crashing issues people are experiencing are due to migrating corrupt accounts using migration assistant. Some are due to font issues or something else that Snow Leopard simply doesn't like.
 
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