# Questions About Upgrading Macbook

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Sunday, 09-Sep-2012 16:14:09

I have a Macbook which was bought in either late 2008 or 2009. I don't remember. But it has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, running at 2.2ghz, 2gb of ram and a 160.04gb hard disk. It originally came with Leopard, but is now running the latest version of Snow Leopard. I'm considering upgrading it, but am not sure if I should choose Lion or Mountain Lion, given my specs. I also have a few questions.
1. How accessible is the Ap Store?
2. What are the advantages of Lion over Snow Leopard, and of Mountain Lion over Lion?
3. They say that navigating the web has been made easier. Does this mean that I can now jump back and forth between edit boxes, check boxes etc, and that I can select text from webpages without constantly having to interact with things? Interacting is one of the things which annoyed me so much that I went back to Windows. Another annoying thing is that, when I type something into the Google search box, I can't figure how to insert text. So say I wanted to type natural home cleaners, and I forgot to add the word natural. I can't figure out how to do so without selecting all, cutting, and retyping the whole thing. This is true for all edit boxes, including the one for posting on The Zone, where I can't even read what I've written to edit it in the first place.
4. Ever since I upgraded to Snow Leopard, Safari keeps saying "busy" "busy" on certain pages. It gets to the point that I have to turn off the Mac and go backk to Windows. Has this issue been resolved in either Lion or Mountain Lion.
5. Since the Snow Leopard upgrade, certain programs, particularly Quicktime and Photo Booth, make the fan go crazy. The noise is horrible! Will I continue to have this problem?
6. Is Bootcamp still available in Lion and/or Mountain Lion? If so, how accessible is it? If I wished to install Windows onto my Mac, could I do so without sighted assistance?
Thanks for any help given. I figured I should at least try this option before getting an entirely new machine.

## Post 2 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Sunday, 09-Sep-2012 16:26:28

I forgot to ask if there is a better alternative to Text Edit, which will save to .rtf and/or unicode text, without ruining my Greek files. Whenever I write a file in Greek with the Mac, and then try to read it with Windows, it comes out as gibberish. The same thing happens if I create a music file with a Greek name. The file works under XP, but the name is trashed. When I paste a GMail message in Text Edit, for some reason, it won't let me read it. It rushes through the GMail links and shoots to the bottom of the file, instead of letting me go line by line, as in a normal text document. I always back up my music, text, etc. by copying and pasting to my compact flash card. But my reader is not compatible with the Mac. Does anyone here know of a compatible reader? When I was able to use my Muvo T100 for the purpose, I would always get empty duplicate files with a period before the file name. So if I had a file called summer.txt, I would also have one called .summer.txt, which would be empty. Is there a way that I can avoid this in the future, while still keeping my backups simple and compatible between operating systems? I read the VoiceOver now has support for many languages, and that Greek can be downloaded. Is this the Dimitris voice, which costs $100 or is it a cheaper option?

## Post 3 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Sunday, 09-Sep-2012 16:40:13

How do I jump between combo boxes and visited links with Safari? I really hope one of these new systems has a way of doing this. Also, for some strange reason, I can now edit in this form. I erally want to give OSX a fair chance, but some things are so incredibly confusing!

## Post 4 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Sunday, 09-Sep-2012 16:40:43

How do I jump between combo boxes and visited links with Safari? I really hope one of these new systems has a way of doing this. Also, for some strange reason, I can now edit in this form. I erally want to give OSX a fair chance, but some things are so incredibly confusing!

## Post 5 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Sunday, 09-Sep-2012 16:45:19

How do I go between combo boxes and visited links? I hope one of these new systems has a way of doing this, so I don't have to go through every link on a page to find what I want, or all the edit fields just to get to a combo box. I do want to give OSX a fair chance, but some of these things are very frustrating.

## Post 6 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Sunday, 09-Sep-2012 18:09:41

Thanks to the fact that The Zone still hasn't caught up to the rest of the social networking sites out there, I can't delete the extra posts. But I can assure you that I didn't do it on purpose. I was actually using the Macbook, and when I hit post, it kept showing the text in the edit box as if it didn't post. So I thought my wireless was acting up again.

## Post 7 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Monday, 10-Sep-2012 13:04:49

I just found this, which specifically relates to accessibility. But does the second post relate to Lion or Mountain Lion? The dictation and web navigation features sound interesting.
http://www.applevis.com/applevis-forum/os-x-mac-app-discussion/snow-leopard-x-lion-mountain-lion

## Post 8 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Monday, 10-Sep-2012 14:17:36

Dictation is deffinitly a mountain lion feature.
As far as moving between visited link, in snow leopard this can be done by pressing voiceover command V and shift v respectively to move backwards or forwards.
I'm not sure if there is a keystroke to move specifically between combo boxes, however, you can move between controls IE edit field drop down and combo box by pressing voiceover command j and shift j respectively.

## Post 9 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Monday, 10-Sep-2012 14:20:58

I would go to your Apple Store first, and have them upgrade your mac to 4 gb of RAM. Really, 2 GB just isn't enough anymore. It's saying busy busy busy because you don't have enough RAM and so there has to be a lot more task sharing going on. Get the RAM upgraded, may be time for you to get a new battery also, and then you should be good to go with your upgrade.
I can't answer any accessibility questions because as of yet I have not actually used a Mac for myself, just helped sighted people with theirs.

## Post 10 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Monday, 10-Sep-2012 15:39:50

Ram, plus battery, plus new os. I wonder how much this will cost?

## Post 11 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Monday, 10-Sep-2012 16:50:42

depends, if you have someone you trust, changing the ram is fairly simple, and cost affective to purchase third party. I added 2gb of crucial memory to a MBP and an iMac both for less than 24 bucks each. OS upgrade would be in the 50 dollar range if you chose to buy lion and then mountain lion.

## Post 12 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Monday, 10-Sep-2012 18:21:26

Well, I can help you with your Lion vs Mountain Lion problem, since Mountain Lion only runs on machines that were purchased in or after 2011. Completely artificial limitations there; I really don't see any reason why any dual core CPU can't handle something like dictation.
Don't pay Apple to install the ram; you'll need to buy 4GB of DDR2 which will consist of 2 2GB sticks - unfortunately from what I've scene Apple like to populate both slots, so you'll probably have 2 1GB's in there at the moment, but it might be worth looking before you buy. Apple operating systems are actually really reasonably priced, so it shouldn't cost that much.
Cheers,
Ben.

## Post 13 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Monday, 10-Sep-2012 18:42:44

I know the os won't cost much, which is why I was considering buying it. But I heard that Lion is $29 and Mountain Lion is $19. So I'm not sure where the $50 comes in. I really don't know anyone locally who could change the ram. I might have my boyfriend try, but he works with musical keyboards and speech synthesizers, not computers. I have a friend who could do it, but I would need to ship the machine to New Orleans, and then back to New Jersey.

## Post 14 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Monday, 10-Sep-2012 20:28:28

Appologize, I didn't see that you were already running snow leopard. Acording to the blogs I've read as long as you are running 10.6.8 you can upgrade to moutain lion, $19.95 Acording to other imformation I can find, ML works on the following:
supported:
◦iMac: Mid-2007 and later
◦Mac mini: Early 2009 and later
◦Mac Pro: Early 2008 and later
◦MacBook: Late 2008 Alumnium, Early 2009, and later
◦MacBook Air: Late 2008 and later
◦MacBook Pro: Mid- and Late 2007 and later

## Post 15 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Tuesday, 11-Sep-2012 4:18:45

It would seem my information was partially incorrect; Mountain Lion will run on your system, but some of the features won't be enabled because it's not a 2011 system.
Sorry about that.

## Post 16 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Tuesday, 11-Sep-2012 15:44:45

No problem guys. We all make mistakes. *smile* I just finished listening to the Maccessability podcast on Lion and a great overview here. They also have tutorials on individual features.
http://www.visionaustralia.org/info.aspx?page=2493
The features which really interest me, from what they discussed, were the enhanced Quicknav (particularly as it relates to Safari), the new voices, autosave, resume, and jumping to downloads. The navigation commands alone make the upgrade worth it for me! I don't understand this dragging and dropping. Is it like copying and pasting? Does it require use of the touchpad? I'm also confused about the noncontiguous selecting. I can't understand why it would be necessary to select things from tables etc. But to be fair, I'm not a power Mac user. I esentially use Mac and Windows for the same things: basic web surfing (GMail, Facebook, Ebay, Google as a search engine, chatting with messenger (in this case, Adium), listening to mp3s, simple unedited voice recording, making unedited videos for Youtube, and backing up to/taking files from my compact flash card. When I say unedited, I basically mean that I make the video or voice recording and that's it. I don't do any fine tuning or use any special software or hardware. On the Mac, I use Quicktime for both of these tasks. I also have never used the touchpad and am not sure how comfortable I would be doing so.
On the podcast, they said that certain people were having problems when upgrading from Snow Leopard and recommended doing a clean install. Apparently, when installing Lion, I could tell it to wipe the hard drive. I am assuming, then, that all of my data would be destroyed? I don't really care, as I don't have any really important things on there, but I am curious about this Time Machine program. How does it work, and do I need an external storage device to use it? Would I be able to access the files with an XP machine, or is it basically an image for restoring things on the Mac? Finally, I read that Apple no longer sells Lion in the ap store. I will try to find information on the new features in Mountain Lion, but am worried that my system specs are too low for it to work easily. That doesn't mean it won't work at all, as demonstrated by the list of compatible machines, but I don't want a sluggish computer. Will I get that with Lion if I don't have the ram upgraded? If I need to have Apple do the upgrade of the ram, how much will it cost?

## Post 17 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Thursday, 13-Sep-2012 16:14:00

Okay. I've been doing a bit of research, and think I want to skip Lion and go to Mountain Lion. I read that you need a 64 bit processor to use it. I went into terminal and did "unname -a" and it didn't say 86x64. I'm sorry if that's not the exact wording, but the 64 wasn't there. Still, I read that even if it can use it, Snow Leopard may not always start up that way. But I do know that my system is a 2.2ghz Intel Core 2 DUo, with 2gb ram, as I said. And when I checked, those are the minimum requirements for Mountain Lion. While it may be slow-going, so long as it doesn't slow my system to a crawl, I think it's best that I at least try out the system before going to Apple for the ram upgrade and the new battery. Plus, it will probably cost less if I install the os myself, instead of asking Apple to do so along with the upgrade.
I actually discovered, to my delight, that the compact flash card reader that I use on my XP machines works on the Mac. So I backed up the files that I wanted to the card, via the copy and paste method, then moved them to trash, and then did a secure empty trash. But I still have a few questions.
When I originally bought this machine, it came with Leopard. I got the Snow leopard upgrade for free, and don't have the cds. I also am not sure where my Leopard disks are located. I know that I could install Mountain Lion over Snow leopard or do a clean install. I've heard that a clean install is better. Is this true? I don't use any nonNative aps at the moment, and doubt that I will. So does it really matter in my case. I've heard that there is an option to wipe the disk clean when doing the install. Is that the same as a clean install? If not, and if a clean install is recommended, can I format the compact flash card, using the Mac, copy Mountain Lion onto it, and install from there? I just checked, and the system info says it's formatted as DOS FAT-32 and has a 4.02gb capacity.
Finally, how accessible is the Ap Store, and the actual installation of Mountain Lion using Voiceover? i will not have any sighted assistance on this, and want things to run as smoothly as possible.

## Post 18 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Thursday, 13-Sep-2012 16:24:23

Can anyone please tell me why, whenever I post here with the Mac, I can't see my new posts? It keeps the current one in the window, as if I didn't post. When I refresh the page and try to view the thread, it jumps me from the search box to the post button. Even when I close the window and then reopen it, the page still acts as if I didn't make a new post, but shows me the old one, and when I try to go to the edit field, either with VO-right or left arrow or with quick nave on, it just continues reading the old post and won't get me to the field. When I hit tab, it jumps me to the top of the website, so I'm forced to use the jump command to get to the edit field, then sort of tab around until Voiceover decides to put me in the field so that I can type or start me back at the beginning of the site again. I hope Mountain Lion fixes this, or The Zone will have to become a Windows-DOS-only site for me.

## Post 19 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Thursday, 13-Sep-2012 16:40:55

I think I'll wait for Apple to upgrade the ram after all. Apparently, trying to run Mountain Lion with only 2gb really is a bad idea.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4159571?start=0&tstart=0
Thankfully, if the posters in the above thread are right, it, 4gb ram only costs about $60. I'm not sure about 6 or 8gb, or how much my machine can actually hold, nor do I know how much Apple will actually charge to install it. But at least I have a base price.

## Post 20 by synthesizer101 (I just keep on posting!) on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 20:52:56

Time to answer a lot of your questions
about updating:
You can not install from your card, because it doesn't have enough memory. You also can't install from a DVD. I installed cleanly from a sixteen gigabyte flash drive, which worked, but smaller than 8gb will not hold all the files (which total to a little over four gigs.
The duplicates are, unfortunately, mac-created files. I don't know why, but they will always be there. However, the greek voices (yes voices plural) are Melina and Alexandros from nuance. I don't speek greek, but the other vocalizer voices (English, Spanish, and Chinese) are pretty high quality. Two gigabytes of ram should be fine, but more ram is definitely better. Depending on your computer model, you either support six or eight gigabytes. You won't need that much, four should be fine, but just throwing out the idea. I didn't have the safari busy thing myself, but I've always cleaned my machines of useless junk that ended up in startup items or similar. Also, I did the jump to eight gigabytes (for audio editing) which presumably fixed any possible issue with too little ram. Still, upgrading is definitely worth it, because if you decide to sell, a computer with mountain lion is better than one with snow leopard. Finally, your boot camp question. Boot camp is accessible in mountain lion as well as snow leopard. However, it requires that you install windows from scratch, which is as always not accessible. Come to think of it, if you had a dos-compatible processor (probably not) you might be able to run dos that way (I know you want dos anything), but you will still need sighted help.

## Post 21 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Saturday, 22-Sep-2012 11:46:46

Here's an update on the Macbook. Mom gave me the serial number, and when I called two Apple stores, to ask if they had the ram, they both said no. The second one said that Apple no longer makes it, and the man was nice enough to look up my serial number, even after I gave him the specs. It's a black Macbook, made in late 2007. I thought it came from 2009! But he did say he thinks it could take Mountain Lion, so I'm going with that. So I decided to look for ram on the net, and to see if either my boyfriend Spiros or my friend Lee could install it. I found a forum which discussed ram for the black Macbook, and one member recommended this site.
http://www.datamemorysystems.com
They have been around for 20 years, have the BBB seal,, offer lifetime warrantees on some of their products, and put all through rigorous testing. Plus, they have compact flash cards! This is the page for the Macbooks with the 2.2ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processors, which is what I have.
http://www.datamemorysystems.com/_apple_info/Apple_MacBook_Intel_Core_2_Duo_13_2.2GHz_Memory_1475.as
They have two 4gb kits, one for $56 and one for $49, and then a single 4gb module. I'm a bit confused here. Which is better, and what is the difference between the two kits? I will be calling them on Monday, but if anyone can help me ahead of time, I would appreciate it. Also, they say that my machine can take 6gb of ram, but then say that it's better to install two of the same type. So two 2gbs would be better than a 2gb and a 4gb. Would I really notice a difference between 6 and 4gb? Either way, it's really cheap!
Now, I just have to decide what to do about the battery! Ebay sells several generic ones, for under $30. Should I go with one of these or try to find one made by Apple? I don't want it exploding or even just quitting on me in a matter of months. I bought a generic battery for my HP and it stopped working after a month or so!
Finally, thanks to synthesizer101 for explaining about Boot Camp. I guess I'll need to get some help on that.
I couldn't stop laughing at the idea of turning the Mac into a DOS machine. Given how fast DOS is on it's own, the speed and memory here would probably make the Mac get up, make my breakfast and coffee, and serve it to me, before it realised that it's not supposed to do that! haha Seriously, though, while I could technically install XP onto the Mac with the current 2gb and Snow Leopard, I don't have the Snow Leopard disks, and can't find my Leopard ones either. Mountain Lion will only accept Windows 7. I don't know what the difference is between Starter, premium, Ultimate, etc. But it still seems better than buying another netbook, which will break after a year or two. At least the Macbook is way more powerful than any netbook I've ever seen!

## Post 22 by synthesizer101 (I just keep on posting!) on Saturday, 22-Sep-2012 22:47:50

Wait a minute! My computer is running mountain lion and windows xp through boot camp. Since you put in the operating system install disks yourself, it's your choice what you install. The boot camp software simply gives you the partition, booting, and windows drivers. If there is some other problem, someone never told my computer.

## Post 23 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Saturday, 22-Sep-2012 22:58:05

Seriously? I've seen, on several sites, that you can't install XP with Mountain Lion. Did you have, say, Snow Leopard before, with XP, and now just installed ML, or did you install XP after installing ML?

## Post 24 by synthesizer101 (I just keep on posting!) on Sunday, 23-Sep-2012 18:06:20

Well, the situation is like this. Snow leopard said that I could not do anything without windows seven discs. I ignored it, told it to keep going, and put in my XP disk. I had my sighted helper select the partition, and it installed fine. I upgraded to mountain lion and things stayed fine. I know that the mac drivers are optimized for windows 7, but they run on xp service pack 2 and above. Therefore, it doesn't matter. I just checked boot camp again. XP will still work because bootcamp still doesn't play a part in installation, only in partitioning.

## Post 25 by synthesizer101 (I just keep on posting!) on Sunday, 23-Sep-2012 18:15:28

I just checked your mac book in the archive of mac models. It can run lion, but not mountain lion. I don't think apple will let you install it at all, because it doesn't support your hardware. You can indeed use 6.0gb of ram, but 4.0 should be fine. This is how I did mine.
1. I took out the screws holding the back of the mac.
2. I pulled hard (the back is latched on, something apple forgot to say).
3. I had the mac oriented toward me, with the indentation for opening it faced toward me.
4. The ram is located on the right side, behind the hard drive (behind for you, not under it).
5. There are two levers that allow you to remove the original module.
6. Put in the new module the way it feels it should go.
7. Put the computer back together.
These are the instructions for the macbook mid 2010, so yours might not be the same. Still, I think it should be relatively similar.
By the way, any laptop ram that has the right specs should work. I paid about $40 for eight gigs, so you can probably pay less. I looked up the ram specs for you. It has to be 667 mhz speed. I made this mistake. If it isn't the relatively old 667 mhz standard, the computer will not turn on. Period. You have no chance. So make sure it is that much. It also has to be ddr2. DDR3 memory doesn't work.

## Post 26 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Sunday, 23-Sep-2012 19:31:21

Okay, that's different. According to what I've read, you can install XP on Snow Leopard and then upgrade to Mountain Lion, as you did. But you can't install XP ontop of Mountain lion.
I'm not being sarcastic here, so please bare with me. Why can my Macbook not run Mountain Lion? It has a core 2 duo processor and 2gb of ram, which I'll be upgrading. I thought that those were the minimum specs needed for ML. Since you understand this better than I, could you please check the link that I gave from Data Memory Systems and let me know if it's even worth it to get the ram they're offering? As I said, I'm calling tomorrow, but don't want to sound like a jerk, and in this area, I really am clueless. I'm willing to bet it will work, as the specs they described seem to be mine. Thanks for all the help.

## Post 27 by synthesizer101 (I just keep on posting!) on Tuesday, 25-Sep-2012 19:32:44

Actually, those are the minimum specs needed for regular lion. For mountain lion, apple, being very useless, have provided a list of computers but no specs. The ram upgrade is fine; that ram will work. I was saying that any other laptop ram with the specs mentioned would work, and there might be less expensive ram available. My reccomendation is to start the app store and click the buy button for mountain lion. See if it gives you an error before you confirm the purchase. If not, it might be worth calling apple to see what they think. Nevertheless, your computer is listed as maximum operating system 10.7.4. If you reinstall snow leopard, (ask the apple store people for the dvd, because you already have the full version), you could upgrade the ram and start anew. This would probably be the best option, provided you actually can't support mountain lion. By the way, I've actually double checked the boot camp. It will still support windows XP. It is a little more complicated, but the windows disk handles the install, not boot camp. You boot from the CD, and if you want to leave a partition blank, boot camp could still create it.

## Post 28 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Tuesday, 25-Sep-2012 20:10:55

Thanks, again, for your help. Yes, I will definitely call Apple on this. Even if it can handle Mountain Lion, I don't want to squeeze it on, and have the thing slow to a crawl because it just barely meets requirements for the os. I'll also see about Snow Leopard. That was given to me as a free upgrade, so maybe, you're right, and they'll give me the dvds. When you say that I can upgrade the ram and start anew, do you mean that I can cleanly install Snow Leopard and stay with that, or that I can install Lion with a clean install, and then, should something go wrong, I could have Snow Leopard as a backup? Opa! I'm really glad about XP! I don't know why these other sites said I couldn't do it. Still, it may be easier to install XP while Snow Leopard is still on the system, especially once I get the dvds.

## Post 29 by synthesizer101 (I just keep on posting!) on Tuesday, 25-Sep-2012 20:36:53

That's my recommendation. However, I think you should see if you can get the disks. From what you have said, I'm not at all confident about your system integrity. Possibly it's as a result of your deleting built-in applications, but possibly it's a faulty installation. In my experienced, the best thing to do with faulty installations is reinstall them. Then, windows XP could be set up if you have some sighted help available.