# I have Leopard 10.5.8 on my mac mini



## stevej (Jun 25, 2011)

and to up-grade to Lion I first have to up-grade to Snow Leopard, $60 for the 2. Don't do any work on my mac just mainly surf the web, download books to put in iTunes, can do that on my iPad also. I use my iPad for reading and I have a Touch on order and will then be using my mac to get books for it. Not tech savvy. I have de-regestered my mac off my daughters Amazon account and will soon do the same with my iPad, I did have some trouble with my mac when I went to re-register it as my OS is too old for the Kindle for Mac on the iTunes store and had to search for the old one on Amazon. So my question for all you Apple folk is do you think I should up-grade, I'm leaning in that direction. Also wondering if I will also have to up-grade my Kindle for Mac.


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## Eeyore (Jul 16, 2009)

Depends on how old your Mac mini is and how much RAM is on it. If you have the G series processor, then Snow Leopard will have a very hard time running on it.

"Snow Leopard will not run on any PowerPC system, even PowerPC G5 systems that are 64-bit capable. If you have a PowerBook G4, iBook G4, PowerMac G4, Mac Mini (G4), iMac G4, iMac G5, or PowerMac G5, do not buy Snow Leopard since you will not be able to install it. Apple has split away from PowerPC, and while there are technical reasons for why the 64-bit architecture in the PowerPC will not work with the latest OS, the fact that Apple has switched architectures is the primary reason for the drop in support.

PowerPC machines will still run Leopard and have most of the features (user experience enhancements) of Snow Leopard, but will not be able to run the optimized code that Apple has put into Snow Leopard. The main differences between Snow Leopard and Leopard are under the hood, so in terms of the operating environment you will not miss much by still running Leopard on your PowerPC system."

Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330494-263.html#ixzz1bkB6hw9d

I was in the Apple store this past weekend playing with the MacBook Pros running OSX Lion. Even though the system requirements say 2GB of RAM minimum, they were all hogging 2.1 to 2.4 Gigs while at rest, with everything closed and no programs running in the background. I would think an absolute minimum of 4 gigs would be needed. You may want to check with an Apple Store to see what type of RAM chips are required if you want to upgrade. You may want to buy from a third party (such as crucial.com ) to save money.

My 2 cents is if you can upgrade, just go up to the latest version of Snow Leopard. Very well supported and it is not as much of a resource hog that Lion is. My current Macbook Pro (dual core with 2 nVidia cards) is still on OSX Snow Leopard.

Best Wishes!


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