Trying to upgrade from leopard on my laptop

[Ravich]

Mid 2008 MBP. I'm having trouble getting the information I need from the official website so I thought I'd ask here.

Am I able to upgrade without wiping my HDD and restoring from a backup?

Other than that, it seems I cant upgrade to 10.8 from 10.5. Do I just have to go with 10.6 instead? I'm not paying for more than one upgrade, so what would be the recommendation?

 

[GGJstudios]

Mid 2008 MBP. I'm having trouble getting the information I need from the official website so I thought I'd ask here.

Am I able to upgrade without wiping my HDD and restoring from a backup?

Other than that, it seems I cant upgrade to 10.8 from 10.5. Do I just have to go with 10.6 instead? I'm not paying for more than one upgrade, so what would be the recommendation?

Yes, you can upgrade your MBP to the most current version of Mountain Lion, without wiping your HDD. However, you may think about waiting until OS X 10.9 Mavericks is released in the fall.

You can find specs on all Apple products, including maximum OS X version supported, by visiting EveryMac.com.

 

[Ravich]

Thanks for the reply.

How can I upgrade to Mountain Lion without first upgrading to Snow Leopard?

 

[GGJstudios]

Thanks for the reply.

How can I upgrade to Mountain Lion without first upgrading to Snow Leopard?

You need SL to access the Mac App Store to download ML. I don't recall if ML is available for sale on USB drive or not, but you can check the Apple site.

 

[Ravich]

Well I have a mac pro with snow leopard in addition to my MBP.

Would it be possible for me to upgrade my MBP to 10.6 using my installation DVDs that came with my Mac Pro, then upgrade to 10.8 through the app store?

 

[GGJstudios]

Well I have a mac pro with snow leopard in addition to my MBP.

Would it be possible for me to upgrade my MBP to 10.6 using my installation DVDs that came with my Mac Pro, then upgrade to 10.8 through the app store?

No, the grey install disks are model-specific and cannot be used on other models. You can only use a retail copy of SL, which you can buy here for only $20.

 

[Weaselboy]

Well I have a mac pro with snow leopard in addition to my MBP.

Would it be possible for me to upgrade my MBP to 10.6 using my installation DVDs that came with my Mac Pro, then upgrade to 10.8 through the app store?

If you have an extra external disk laying around you could use Carbon Copy Cloner (free 30 day trial version) to clone the 10.6 install from the Mac Pro to the Macbook, then you would be on 10.6.8 allowing you to update to Mountain Lion. It will involve some jockeying around with your data, but if you want to get this done without waiting for a SL disk you will never use again, it would work.

 

[Ravich]

So it wont let me just upgrade from the disc itself?

 

[Weaselboy]

So it wont let me just upgrade from the disc itself?

You mean from the DVD? No, you would need to install Snow Leopard on the machine or clone it over like I mentioned.

 

[Ravich]

I wasnt clear. What I'm asking is whether I can use the DVD to upgrade my laptop from 10.5 to 10.6 and then purchase 10.8 from the app store.

 

[Weaselboy]

I wasnt clear. What I'm asking is whether I can use the DVD to upgrade my laptop from 10.5 to 10.6 and then purchase 10.8 from the app store.

Oh yes, that will certainly work. All I was suggesting earlier was a way around having to buy and wait for the new SL DVD if you did not want to.

 

[Ravich]

Well I already have the snow leopard DVD that came with my Mac Pro (desktop), but I was wondering if that would be problematic since I think the DVD says "mac pro" on it and it's already installed on my Mac Pro.

 

[GGJstudios]

Well I already have the snow leopard DVD that came with my Mac Pro (desktop), but I was wondering if that would be problematic since I think the DVD says "mac pro" on it and it's already installed on my Mac Pro.

As I said earlier, no, you cannot use the grey install disc that came with your Mac Pro to install Snow Leopard on your MBP. You need to buy a retail copy of Snow Leopard, as I already stated.