Older Macbooks compatibility with Lion OS

Dear Members

I have been using Macs for few years, and now my wife also wants to switch to Apple, I would like to buy a second hand model in order for her to start and I have seen some nice stuff on the internet, but I am concerned that some of the macbooks I have seen will be no compatible with Lion OS. I have seen the Macbook unibody 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo but unsure whether to buy it.
The main question is from which year models (macbooks or macbook pro) will be the Lion OS run smoothly (for daily tasks such internet, pages, excel) dropbox. She does not need a massive hard disk (roughly 128G)

I understand that any Intel Core 2 Duo can accept Lion OS, but Lion will not run smoothly in all of them. My budget is approximately $ 800 (american dollars)

Your help is very much appreciated

Best Regards

DrO

First off, who says Lion will not run smoothly in all of them? Just assumption?

Even if that is the case, since no one has Lion yet (except those that are under NDA), it's going to be sort of hard for anyone to answer the question.

As is always the case with computers, get the best you can get with the money you have to spend.

We have seen an improvement of speed on the older machines from 10.4 to 10.5 to 10.6. This may still be the case with 10.7. But, none of us are going to know until we can get our hands on it.

(And one thread per topic please.)

I believe Lion requires an i3, i5 or i7 processor. My MacBook is just over two years old, but an i number doesn't appear in the specs, so I'm guessing I can't use it.

"Your Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor to run Lion. Find out if your current Mac has one of these processors by clicking the Apple icon at the top left of your screen, then choosing About This Mac."

pulled directly from apple.com

mere speculation on my part here, but I doubt it(Lion) will be much more processor intensive then the current release. Just a guess, but I seriously doubt they would release something that would bog down a core2 at this point...

Thank you

Thank you all for your responses

I will buy the best can get with the money, one laptop already running snow leopard, ideally i5 or i7. I will let to know in July whether it will run Lion. I believe it will.

(Dear Bobtomay, sorry for the duplicate thread, I did not know how to delete it from the wrong topic)

DrO

I would not be surprised if Lion is actually LIGHTER on resources than Snow Leopard, folks. New features do not necessarily add up to more resources. For example, take a fresh look at that Mission Control demo. That is now ONE program that is doing the work that took SEVERAL programs to do in Snow Leopard. Just sayin'.

MightyGem said:

I believe Lion requires an i3, i5 or i7 processor. My MacBook is just over two years old, but an i number doesn't appear in the specs, so I'm guessing I can't use it.

Click to expand...

Just to be clear, it does not require an i series chip.

Every Intel Mac made except the 1st gen machines (Core Duo) from mid '06 will be able to run Lion. The 2nd gen Intel machines that began shipping in late '06 moved to the Core2Duo. Every Mac from that time forward will be able to install Lion.

Don't really think there are that many Core Duos out there (by comparison). By the time of the real beginning of the jump to OS X from Windows by the "switchers" due to Vista, the Core2Duo was in play.

Apple would be foolish to limit it to just the i machines, that's a small market at the moment really. Intel only for sure though.