PC User moves to Mac needs urgent help

Hi I have bought a second hand machine spec as follows

Mac OS 10.5.6
2.66 Intel Core Duo
2 GB DDR3 Ram 1066 Mhx ( 6mb L2 Cache )
N Vidia Geforce 9400M Graphics

Can you help , what OS can I upgrade this system to , Im finding things like skype wont work on recent versions.

Is Mac OS similar to PC ie upgrade to a newer recent version or is it limited. If limited can anyone advise which OS I would be best to install to maximise the machine I have bought.

Is installation same as PC ie boot from instal disk

\\\any help for an absolute newbie would be appreciated so I can get up and running.

Regards Nick

If it is indeed a CoreDuo and not a Core2Duo machine, then Snow Leopard 10.6 is the newest version of OS X you can upgrade to.

That should be fine since most applications use Snow Leopard as the minimum system requirement. That might change with a few more releases of OS X, and by then you're roughly-2005 era Mac will be sufficiently old and you'd benefit from an upgrade anyway..

You can purchase Snow Leopard from Apple for $19.99 through the link in the above post..

bignik726 said:

Hi I have bought a second hand machine spec as follows

Mac OS 10.5.6
2.66 Intel Core Duo
2 GB DDR3 Ram 1066 Mhx ( 6mb L2 Cache )
N Vidia Geforce 9400M Graphics

Click to expand...

Hi Nick - welcome to the Apple world (I returned a year ago!) - in addition to the excellent advice already given, you should increase your RAM to at least 4 GB (if possible) - the minimal requirement suggested by Apple is 2 GB - Apple Support. Dave

Hi its a desktop machine , reading from the system info it says Intel core dual I believe the machine is circa 2009.

regards nick

bignik726 said:

Hi its a desktop machine , reading from the system info it says Intel core dual I believe the machine is circa 2009.

Click to expand...

Sounds like this is a 2009 iMac. The cpu in this is a "core 2 duo". It can run the latest OS...10.9 "Mavericks".

It is indeed an early 2009 iMac 2.66GHz as Nick states. The graphics card were used in that model and changed for the late 2009 iMac.

Don't even THINK about going past Snow Leopard (10.6) until you have maxed out the RAM.