Should I upgrade to El Capitan if I only have 2GB of memory?

[theALmighty66]

I purchased the MacBook Pro back in September of 2009. Lately there have been browser crashes left & right, despite clearing all caches & verifying the disk to see nothing is wrong.

In the past I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks & found it slowed everything down more than anything—then downgraded to Mountain Lion & it was fine for a while. Now I feel it might be time to change.

Any advice?

Thanks!

 

[honestone]

Definitely increase the memory, to at least 4 gig. And, if you run multiple programs at the same time, then go for more.

Also, if the internal drive is the original one that came with the machine, it could be getting "bad". Have you done any disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs at all? Also, are you making backups to an external device?

 

[theALmighty66]

Definitely increase the memory, to at least 4 gig. And, if you run multiple programs at the same time, then go for more.

Also, if the internal drive is the original one that came with the machine, it could be getting "bad". Have you done any disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs at all? Also, are you making backups to an external device?

Well I probably run two or three programs at a time usually, so … damn. And I do the disk verification & repair + permissions repair often, but it doesn't do much good.

I do back up my important files, but it looks like it won't matter; I'll just stick with Mountain Lion & 2GB while entering sweepstakes for a new MacBook.

Thanks!

 

[Jigs]

For what it's worth, I have a 2007 MBP running El Cap just fine, but I've upgraded to the max 6GB RAM + SSD there. Never crashes, but it's still slow, especially when compared to my current daily use machine, a 2015 rMBP with 8GB and an SSD.

 

[honestone]

For what it's worth, I have a 2007 MBP running El Cap just fine, but I've upgraded to the max 6GB RAM + SSD there. Never crashes, but it's still slow, especially when compared to my current daily use machine, a 2015 rMBP with 8GB and an SSD.

For me, it was/is just the opposite after I swapped out the slow, 1 TB 5400 rpm Hitache drive that came with my late 2012 Mac Min i for a fast, 256 gig Samsung 840 Pro SSD. I still only have 4 gig of Ram in it (I can upgrade the Ram on my own), but just about 99% of the time, I am only running one app. Of course, the Mini has a faster i7 Intel Processor, whereas the two Macbooks have (most likely) a slower one. The same is true of my MacBook Air, as it has a 1.3 GHz Intel i5 one. But, it performs fine, for my purposes.

 

[theALmighty66]

Thank you.