iMac 8,1 Upgrade Options

Hello Everyone,

I have a friend who has an iMac 8,1 with 2GB of memory. It is currently at 10.5.8 and she wants it completely wiped and upgraded. I did research and it looks like I can upgrade it to Mavericks. I created a boot flash drive for it and was told it couldn't upgrade to that. I then tried it with 10.7 and got the same message.

What is my upgrade path? I know there were a few versions you had to upgrade manually and then you could use the Mac App Store to upgrade to Mavericks.

Thanks!

According to EveryMac.com, the iMac 8,1 can indeed run Mavericks and Yosemite for that matter. Here are the 4 variations of that model:
Lookup Mac Specs By Serial Number, Order, Model & EMC Number, Model ID @ EveryMac.com

I don't know why it's saying you can upgrade using the boot drive you made... you should probably elaborate on what you did exactly.

It also really needs to be pointed out that, while Mavericks and Yosemite will run on 2 GB of RAM, the experience will be VERY VERY poor! I would do no less than 4 GB of RAM. This generation of iMac will take a maximum of 6 GB, so I would just max it out. Apple officially supports 4 GB as a max, but EveryMac has links to vendors who have successfully gotten it to use 6 GB.

You will have to upgrade to Snow Leopard OS X.6 by buying from Apple Online for $20 with postage. Then after updating to OS X.6.8, you can download Yosemite from the App Store, Mavericks is no longer available.

One warning. On a computer so old the operating system will be slow with an old CPU and little memory. I would suggest friend goes to Snow Leopard and then think about the next step first.