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Would upgrading to Snow Leopard on my iMac Tiger 10.4.1 give it a new lease of life?

julianna1973

julianna1973

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 14, 2008
304
0
Scotland
I have been a wee bit worried lately that my iMac is on its last legs & I have visions of losing all my stuff. Nothing major has happened but sometimes it has glitches or will freeze up a little & I need to restart, then its fine.

Its about 4 years old roughly I think!

I have been holding off doing anything just in case a new design iMac is released in the next couple of months or so.

I am asking this as I dont want to spend unnecessary £££ if it wont extend my iMacs life span. Im not a computer expert so thats why I might well be asking a fairly obvious question!!

Whats your opinions?

Or would a wee service/clean @ the genius bar help?
 
The iMac will see an update in early next year, whether it is a redesign remains to be seen.

If your iMac is a PowerPC, remember you cannot upgrade. I imagine that upgrading the ram would be more beneficial.
 
thegoldenmackid said:
The iMac will see an update in early next year, whether it is a redesign remains to be seen.

If your iMac is a PowerPC, remember you cannot upgrade. I imagine that upgrading the ram would be more beneficial.
Click to expand...


Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 2 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM41.0055.B08
SMC Version: 1.1f5




I have been told recently I can upgrade.
 
Upgrade the ram, especially if you are planning on buying at the next refresh. Snow Leopard will install, but the ram would be a better upgrade. Also remember that you have to buy the Box Set, so it is going to be a tad bit more costly of an upgrade.
 
thegoldenmackid said:
Upgrade the ram, especially if you are planning on buying at the next refresh. Snow Leopard will install, but the ram would be a better upgrade. Also remember that you have to buy the Box Set, so it is going to be a tad bit more costly of an upgrade.
Click to expand...

But do you think it is wise to install the new OS on an aging computer? Or are Apples much longer laster?
 
julianna1973 said:
But do you think it is wise to install the new OS on an aging computer? Or are Apples much longer laster?
Click to expand...

Up until about 3 weeks ago, my primary computer was a 1.0 eMac, that had passed 6 years of age. Your imac still has plenty of life left in it - buy the upgrade, but also look at upgrading your ram, and if you don't back up your hard drive on a regular basis, start doing it. Probably the first (and likely only) thing that will fail on your mac in the next several years is the hard drive, and you don't want to wait until after it fails to decide that backing up is important...
 
mkaake said:
Up until about 3 weeks ago, my primary computer was a 1.0 eMac, that had passed 6 years of age. Your imac still has plenty of life left in it - buy the upgrade, but also look at upgrading your ram, and if you don't back up your hard drive on a regular basis, start doing it. Probably the first (and likely only) thing that will fail on your mac in the next several years is the hard drive, and you don't want to wait until after it fails to decide that backing up is important...
Click to expand...

Ok thanks

How much roughly to upgrade ram then & is it better to get Apple to do it?
 
I upgraded an old G4 Mac Mini to Leopard recently and it's working great. You should install if you can. However as most people pointed out, more memory would be a good starting point. :)

Lastly, there's no rush to Snow Leopard. You should wait for the 10.6.1 to come out at least before the upgrade so you don't have to deal with any of the initial bugs :)

I like bugs so i'm upgrading right away.
 
julianna1973 said:
Ok thanks

How much roughly to upgrade ram then & is it better to get Apple to do it?
Click to expand...

Go to http://www.crucial.com/uk/index.aspx and enter your computer into the drop down boxes. Your computer is an iMac Core Duo... it doesn't really matter about screen size as the CDs all took the same RAM.

2GB is £25ish and if you decide to upgrade the OS it will make a real difference.

You should be able to upgrade the RAM yourself. It is really simple.

I agree with the other posters as well. If you are worried about your data then sort out a back up solution. External drives are very cheap nowadays.
 
I'm in the same boat on my 2.16ghz 24 inch iMac. Still running tiger and runs great. I doubt I will upgrade this unless the difference is real good. I would hold off buying another iMac until the next refresh. I'm suspecting a dual core i5 making it 4 total cores. About the only way to keep the heat down and claim a 4 core iMac.
 
Clearly the best advice is to first upgrade the memory via the single screw panel at the bottom edge of the iMac. There are only two memory slots and the maximum memory your computer can use is 2GB.

If both slots have 512MB sticks, then you'd have to replace both with 1GB sticks, etc.

Then, I'd wait till the entire Mac ownersplanet starts selling their retail Leopard DVDs for cheap . . .
 
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