Update Leopard to Snow Leopard

Hi,
in order to upgrade a MacBook to Mountain Lion I want to make an Upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard.

Two questions regarding this:
1) I currently have Microsoft Office 2007 for Mac installed and would like to keep it. But I do not have the installation disc or something similar as it was pre-installed. Is there any way to keep it or back it up to reinstall it later?

2) I have BootCamp with Windows 7 on my computer too. Are there any issues when I try to upgrade to Snow Leopard? I would like to keep Windows too for the moment.

Best, Erik

Welcome to Mac-Forums

If you do an upgrade, all of your existing applications will be kept intact so no problems there. I have no experience with boot camp, so can't answer that one..

You want to make sure that Office 2007 isn't a Universal application which will not work with Mountain Lion, and also you want to make sure that your MacBook actually is capable of running Mountain Lion. Depending on the specs, you might have a better experience sticking with Snow Leopard instead..

I currently have Microsoft Office 2007 for Mac installed and would like to keep it.

Click to expand...

There is no such app for the Mac, Office 2007 is Windows only. I'm assuming you either mean Office 2008 or the Windows version in Boot Camp? If it's Office 2008, then follow Raz0rEdge's advice.

Oh yes, it must be Office 2008

As you suggested I may stay with Snow Leopard then ... it has 2GHz and (now, after an upgrade) 5GB of RAM, so maybe I should not expect too much.
What is this Universal Application stuff about? I read, that it is required for applications to run on both PowerPC and Intel architectures. I read that Office 2008 is indeed ported to be Universal, so would this work, if I upgrade to Snow Leopard only?

Best, Erik

An Universal application that will work on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. On Intel Macs this is done using a software called Rosetta. Starting with OS X Lion (10.7), Rosetta support was dropped. This meant that Universal and PowerPC-specific apps no longer work. Snow Leopard (10.6) was the latest OS you could go if you wanted to continue running these legacy applications.

Most app developers are writing apps with the requirement being 10.6 and above, so upgrading to Snow Leopard should be completely fine for you.

Also, with a machine with less resources (CPU or memory), Snow Leopard is probably going to work better than Lion or Mountain Lion anyway..

Raz0rEdge said:

An Universal application that will work on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. On Intel Macs this is done using a software called Rosetta. Starting with OS X Lion (10.7), Rosetta support was dropped. This meant that Universal and PowerPC-specific apps no longer work.

Click to expand...

This is incorrect.

A "Universal" app is one with two binaries: PowerPC *and* Intel. Universal apps should work *just fine* on 10.7 and 10.8.

Rosetta was using up to and including 10.6 to allow PowerPC-only apps to run on Intel Macs. Rosetta was discontinued in 10.7 because nearly every developer still supporting their app got on the bus and made (at least) a Universal version of the app.

Office 2008 is a Universal binary app, and consequently works on Intel Macs (running 10.7 and later). Microsoft does not support the app except for "maintenance/security" updates anymore, so it is best to upgrade to Office 2011.

Microsoft: Office 2011, 2008 works with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion | ZDNet

Depending on the age of the machine and the willingness of the OP to upgrade, staying on (or in this case upgrading to) Snow Leopard may be the best option for the time being, but the writing is on the wall for that older machine ...

Thanks for the clarification..

The problem with some universal apps is that their installer is PPC coded and refuse to install with Lion or Mountain Lion. I've run into a few like that, mostly games. Microsoft had to provide a patch to Office 2008 so that it could be installed in Lion and ML.