I've hesitated making a thread about this for a few months now given cyberculture's notorious hatred of Macs, but given Firefox just popped up saying it and Apple no longer support my operating system, I just don't care anymore, and figure someone here will be able to help.
Story:
I'm using an old Macbook from mid-2009, specs:
Mac OS X Version 10.5.8
Processor: 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 2 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
I'm three whole OS versions behind because I'm an idiot and never upgraded initially when 10.6 was released, and of course Apple (or any operating system? I don't know these things) requires you to have the latest version installed before upgrading, so now I can't even access the Mac App Store to even try and purchase 10.6 if it's even still available.
Here's the deal though: I'm only on this computer for another year, as I plan on upgrading to the newest Macbook Pro available next summer. So I'm not too fixated on this machine, though I'd like it to run well until then, obviously. Point being, I'd like to get it up to 10.7 so I can have Apple Mail version 5, as well as support for everything else.
From what I saw on Amazon, Mac OS 10.6 is like, $150. I'm not paying that as an intermediate OSX, so I torrented a disk image .iso file that's ready to install...only it wants me to burn the disk image to a DVD, and of course it's a 7.7 GB file and the traditional DVDs I have are 4.7 GB. I compressed the file down to a 6.1 GB zip, which of course still won't fit said DVD.
LIST OF QUESTIONS:
- How do I install 10.6 given the above?
- Can I install 10.6 without getting an 8 GB dual-layered DVD? Are these alternatives worth it?
- Is there are great place online to back up my computer, or should I just buy an external hard drive?
Thanks!
BONUS SIDE QUESTION OMG: Personal opinion: how often do you guys upgrade your computers? I like the idea of doing it every 4 years, but this situation has given me an interesting perspective into the question, given I have done no updates on this computer and am finding that, after 3 years, such systems essentially become obsolete. Now I'm assuming that's kind of irrelevant given had I updated my operating system accordingly things would be fine for another few years until the machine's specs couldn't support a new OSX, but still, it begs the question.
