upgrade OS

[JimJbc]

I currently have a 7-year-old IMAC which was recently upgraded to OS X 10.9.5. It had become quite buggy and after the upgrade became increasingly so to the point that I had to take it in to the shop for some fiddling. While they made it better it's still not running as smoothly as it did when it was new and the tech told me that it was just getting too long in the tooth (like me) and it was about as good as it was going to get. Now I'm being pushed to upgrade to Yosemite. Am I just asking for trouble, should I just leave well enough alone and coast until things totally collapse or should I just call this baby quits and upgrade to a new computer? The hardware all seems fine so it's a shame to throw it away just because there's a new toy waiting with my name on it. As you can tell from some of my terminology, I'm not a very sophisticated user - not illiterate, just maybe about grade 3!

Thanks, Jim.

 

[Slydude]

What problems are you still experiencing? As a general rule I advocate finding the source of the problems before upgrading. Upgrades/updates fix some problems but do nothing for others.

Also can you tell us a bit more about your Mac's specs? How much memory is present (Apple menu choose About This Mac). The amount of hard drive space available would also be helpful. From Finder click once on the hard drive and press command i simultaneously. The next window should show free and used drive space.

 

[pm-r]

Without even knowing all the specs of your 7-year-old IMAC, I can guarantee installing Yosemite sure won't fix things nor speed things up!!!

It sounds like a bit of maintenance might be in order, or the HDD may be failing, or… or…

 

[MacInWin]

I had to take it in to the shop for some fiddling. While they made it better it's still not running as smoothly as it did when it was new and the tech told me that it was just getting too long in the tooth (like me) and it was about as good as it was going to get.

OK, that scares me. What shop did you take it to? What "fiddling" did this tech do? Was it a true Apple certified tech, or just a "PC repair" kind of place who knows Windows but not OS X or Apple products? What did you upgrade from to get to 10.9.5? What does "not running as smoothly as it did" mean? What is not "smooth" in it now?

 

[S.SubZero]

I recently inherited a 2007 MacBook Pro from work; with a 7200rpm modern hard drive it's 'tolerable' with Yosemite but still obviously laggy. I am not investing money in this thing but I have a feeling if I found a small SSD and could get the 4GB up to 6GB it would be pretty usable. I think a 7-year old iMac could be improved similarly. Just be aware DDR2 RAM is crazy expensive now.

 

[johnodd4]

Honestly it depends let me explain.

Can your iMac support 8 gig's of ram then you are ok at going to maverick and yosemite however yosemite needs 8 gig's of ram or better just to be stable.

how large of a hard drive you can speed up your macintosh simply by upgrading the hard drive to a 1 TB hard drive.

 

[JimJbc]

Thanks for the responses. First of all, further info: memory 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I have 134G left on a 250G hard drive.

The most recent problems I've been having mostly involve email. I'm using Entourage which is part of MS Office for Mac. I just don't like the Mac mail program. The biggest issue is that it won't automatically download the latest messages but needs to be prompted. It tries but leaves this message: Connection to the server failed or was dropped. Not a big deal. The other thing that happens is when I'm using the auto scroll function of my MS mouse with the scroll wheel it occasionally freezes, the spinning beach ball appears for about half a minute and then a box pops up talking about some script not working and offering me the options of debugging it (not for me) or cancelling it which then allows me to resume. Again, not a big deal but irritating. These things appeared only after I upgraded to Snow Leopard.

BTW, the shop I took it in to were the same people I bought if from and they are most definitely Apple certified techs and consultants. Mostly they deal with installing networks in offices and that sort of thing.

My concern is that if I get Yosemite things will get even crazier. As it is I can live with the minor glitches. I will be buying a new machine sometimes soon but I do want to get the most out of this one.

I'm still debating as to whether to buy another MAC or go back to a Windows machine. I've enjoyed not having any virus protection on this one but after all this time I've never really gotten comfortable with the file handling system - things still disappear, turn up in trash, or land somewhere I didn't instruct them to forcing me to go searching. It's probably just me but still, I never had this problem with Windows. There were others, of course.

Anyways, I appreciate your time. Thanks again. Jim

 

[MacInWin]

Jim, the best advice I can give you is to go back to Windows. You'll never be happy with OS X. You are using MS software with MS hardware instead of using the Apple software with Apple hardware. And you have admitted not understanding how the OS handles files. So don't beat your head against that wall any more. OS X and Apple products are not for everyone. Go where you will be happy and feel comfortable. That's why there are choices!

 

[JimJbc]

Gee, Jake, that's very helpful. I don't know what it is about some MAC users that makes them feel so superior. I've been a MAC user for 7 years and there are elements that I do like. There were elements of Windows machines that I didn't like. The only thing I've "admitted" was that I wasn't a very sophisticated user and I'm easily stumped when things don't respond the way I think they should. My bad!

My simple question is whether people think upgrading to Yosemite will likely cause more irregularities on my machine than my switch to Snow Leopard. While the problems I described are minor and not enough of a bother to prompt an immediate hardware upgrade, this level of performance was only after I had it in to the shop. At this stage, I don't want to spend any more money on this machine because I suspect that it's days are numbered regardless of what I do.

So if anyone has any ideas or thoughts on this I would appreciate it. However, if all you have is snark, please don't bother yourself or me.

Thanks, Jim

 

[MacInWin]

I didn't mean to be snarky or to come across a "superior." It was a serious suggestion. Your iMac is pretty old, the memory is slower than more modern machines, Yosemite needs even more power to be useful. So, the question for you is, "Do I upgrade and stress this old beast even more, do I invest a lot of money for a new Mac, or do I admit that the Mac experiment isn't really for me?" It's not a question of superiority, it's that there is no point in being miserable with an operating system/computer/infrastructure that isn't comfortable for you. You said you've had the Mac seven years, but also said:

I'm still debating as to whether to buy another MAC or go back to a Windows machine. I've enjoyed not having any virus protection on this one but after all this time I've never really gotten comfortable with the file handling system - things still disappear, turn up in trash, or land somewhere I didn't instruct them to forcing me to go searching. It's probably just me but still, I never had this problem with Windows. There were others, of course.

So, you, yourself are questioning whether to continue with Mac or go back to Windows. I think, seriously, that the latter option might well be the better path.

No snark, no "superior" attitude, just a serious suggestion to get you into a happy place for you.

 

[harryb2448]

Jim I do not think Jake is the type of guy to be superior or snarky, he was offering honest advice.

Many of us here use both Macs and PC machines, in my case a Dell Latitude. You are not happy with the iMac and if it were me I would update it ~ seven years is a pretty fair run. On the other hand it is up to you to decide if you should spend your money on a newer Mac or continue with Windows.

 

[JimJbc]

Actually, Jake, this last post was very helpful. I just wanted to know whether Yosemite would make things better, worse, or stay the same. Given what you've said, I'm just going to leave things alone for the time being.

As to going back to PC, please understand that I'm really on the horns of a dilemma here. On the one hand, my IMAC hardware has been rock solid which is more than I can say about the PCs I owned before. I also really appreciate the fact that I've never installed any sort of anti-virus protection and have had no problems. Every time I would be in an Apple store and would ask them whether I should, they always advised against it. The general performance of my IMAC has been very satisfactory but it's not been perfect.

I still don't quite get the file management system. Documents routinely, not always, go elsewhere and I have to search for them. I'm not great at this stuff so I suspect that it's more me than it is the machine. I also wish that I could find some simple architectural drafting software that is either free or real inexpensive which I could find with PC. All the MAC stuff is either more than I want to pay or too convoluted for my little mind. BTW, the reason I bought MS Office for Mac was because I knew how to make it work for me and I knew others wouldn't have any compatibility issues when I send them stuff for my business.

I've been looking at options and while it would be a bit cheaper to go PC, by the time I add in a monitor it doesn't really amount to that much for a lower-end machine which will more than satisfy my requirements. I think the new mouse is way cool although I do like the auto scroll on the MS mouse I'm using now.

Thanks again for your interest and please accept my apologies for my thin-skinned reply.

Jim

PS. what about those Clean Your Mac pop-ups and ads all over the place? Any value or just another scam?

 

[MacInWin]

I still don't quite get the file management system. Documents routinely, not always, go elsewhere and I have to search for them. I'm not great at this stuff so I suspect that it's more me than it is the machine. I also wish that I could find some simple architectural drafting software that is either free or real inexpensive which I could find with PC. All the MAC stuff is either more than I want to pay or too convoluted for my little mind. BTW, the reason I bought MS Office for Mac was because I knew how to make it work for me and I knew others wouldn't have any compatibility issues when I send them stuff for my business.

...CLIP...

PS. what about those Clean Your Mac pop-ups and ads all over the place? Any value or just another scam?

Ok, for the file management, I would suggest you get a book on the OS. There is a series called "Missing Manual" that has been pretty good. Here is a link to the publisher. That may help you with the transition from what you know about Windows to OS X.

As for software being more expensive, yep, fact of life, that is. Don't really have much of an answer for that, it's just that Windows developers get to recover development costs over millions of users, OS X developers have a smaller pool of potential customers to recover the same costs.

As for the pop-up ads, two recommendations, Ghostery and AdBlock+. Both will do a nice job smashing those annoyances. And if by any chance you get hijacked by adware, AdwareMedic is a good tool of clean things up.