[abbaZaba]

I am debating on whether or not to upgrade my iMac to Mountain Lion.

has anyone installed Mountain Lion on an iMac 7,1? how's the performance? (it's the last model listed as officially compatible with Mountain Lion)

[Chongo]

I installed ML this morning. No issues so far. I did notice that network connections configured IPV6 for me.

[SierraDragon]

How much RAM will your iMac take, and what demanding apps do you intend?

[abbaZaba]

I've got it maxed out at 6GB RAM. I have three accounts, and on my own account I'm usually running Twitter, Textual, Sparrow, Chrome, ARD, iTunes, Last.fm, Fantastical, Hazel Dropbox, Moom, Weather, Flux, Pathfinder, Growl, AirServer, and Office. I don't do any heavy image editing or graphics intensive stuff. This machine mainly uses fairly light applications, albeit a lot of them running at once. The most demanding app I guess would have to be Plex when watching HD media or if I fire up Steam to play some CS:S, but that's about it.

[Chongo]

6GB? I thought 4GB was the max, that's what I have installed.

[abbaZaba]

6GB is the actual according to MacTracker and what is actually in mine

[FireWire]

I have 6 GB also! I plan to install ML eventually. I currently run 10.6.8.

[abbaZaba]

Looks like I might be the first of us to install ML on the 7,1. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Chongo]

I went from SL to ML yesterday (7/28). It took about and hour os so to download on a 12 Mbps DSL connection, about 35 minutes to install. I had to download Java separately. I have an IPV6 enable DSL modem and it auto configured that.. No issues other than Safari on FB. The iOS like functions are nice and are taking a bit to get used to. (Single finger swipe to go between web pages instead of two. Tapping the Magic Mouse to zoom etc.)



BTW, How do you instal 6GB? My iMac has two slots for RAM. (20")

EDIT: I saw on everymac.com, 1 2GB and 1 4GB stick. How well does this work? Has anyone tried two 4 GB sticks?

[SierraDragon]

With 6 GB RAM ML should be OK in general on that box for the apps you describe. However you do have a wide range of apps, any one of which could have anomalies with a new OS version. You may want to watch the forums of any specific apps that are really important to you to verify that other users are not having issues with ML.

[spruceguy]

Mine is a Mid-2007 iMac 20'' model with 2 GB RAM. I upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion 2 days back and Mountain Lion has ben roaring fantastic.

[abbaZaba]

chongo: I have not tried to 4GB sticks. I would hazard a guess that it would not boot with two 4GB sticks.

[turtle777]

I got ML running on a 6GB iMac 7.1

Runs great. Memory use is better than under Lion. When I ran Parallels, my memory use would get in the 75-80% range, now in ML, it's under 70%.

-t

[revgeis2]

I tried to install ML on our iMac 7,1, having done it on my MacBook Pro without a hitch.

Everything went normally through the Restart, but after a few minutes the installation cancelled, indicating something about a failure in a recovery file. I didn't catch the details, but the instruction was to contact Apple. The only difference in this installation was that it was done through ATT DSL.

Could the download be corrupted? We have tried the install from the download twice but have not attempted re-downloading.

[turtle777]

I'd try the re-download, but I would give it only a small chance.

-t

[sek929]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I got ML running on a 6GB iMac 7.1
Runs great. Memory use is better than under Lion. When I ran Parallels, my memory use would get in the 75-80% range, now in ML, it's under 70%.
-t

I looked at Crucial, and the 4GB single chip seemed a bit pricey just to add another 2GB on to my current 4GB setup.

I'm very interested in Mountain Lion, seeing as it is going to be the last upgrade my machine will take. These days I'm a very light user, so would you say ML is going to give me anything above future app compatibility compared to SL, or would I better off just keeping my machine as it is?

Edit: For clarification, I have the mid-2007 2.0ghz 20" iMac. No spring chicken, but runs fine at the moment.

Hey!

I didn't post here before, but kept reading for a while now... My mum has a 20" 2.4 Ghz Mid-2007 iMac, 4 GB RAM. To be honest, 10.5 was installed for several years, but I wondered about switching entirely over to 10.8 - and obviously I wondered about performance, especially as 10.5 was noticeably quick in nearly every regard.

So, I did it. It was not so easy, I also bought a new Office and Photoshop Elements 10 and I was a bit worried about device compatibility... Even though: Everything works beautifully so far. And I find it really fast, even all the animations. My mum also got a Magic Mouse for christmas and in 10.5 without Gestures... but now, this is really cool, I wondered for years if anyone would get something like Exposé to work for real, as something about it had always felt so impractical - and Mission Control is precisely the answer to this question I think (note: double tap).
I don't know about full screen apps and switching between them quickly, somehow, I wonder if the screen isn't 'too big' for this; my attitude to 20" desktop screens (or the newer, wider 21" ones) always was to be a bit generous, always with the feeling to have more than enough space for everything. - However, I can well imagine notebook users to be totally happy about using full screen apps, as they might actually make a really practical difference.

Last note: Somehow, I told my parents to, in the future, look for things where they belong - sometimes you kept wondering why things simply weren't where you would expect them, but that may be no longer true, 10.8 seems so tidy everywhere, so careful... well, Cool!

(btw: I went with the MacWorld tutorial and created a USB thumb stick with 10.8, it seems the best way to me and I'm going to resell 10.6 in a few weeks I'd say, it appears a bit harder to get now that Apple no longer sells this, too.)

Greetings! Pete

[Edit: I forgot: We have an Epson Perfection 1240U (scanner), an HP OfficeJet J4580 (scanner/printer) and a Brother HL-2030 (printer). The Epson and the HP worked 'right away' (you plug them in and either it asks you to look for drivers with Software Update or you should check Software Update manually as it might show you precisely the drivers you need). The Brother worked after installing the drivers from Brother's website. Everything fine with these devices, I can also scan slides with the Epson and both trays were recognized for scanning with the HP... Don't forget to check here (which is a cool website anyway):
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669?viewlocale=en_US ]

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by sek929 

I looked at Crucial, and the 4GB single chip seemed a bit pricey just to add another 2GB on to my current 4GB setup.

I'm very interested in Mountain Lion, seeing as it is going to be the last upgrade my machine will take.  These days I'm a very light user, so would you say ML is going to give me anything above future app compatibility compared to SL, or would I better off just keeping my machine as it is?

Edit: For clarification, I have the mid-2007 2.0ghz 20" iMac.  No spring chicken, but runs fine at the moment.

I dunno, SL is such a long time ago

Plus, I never ran SL and ML side by side.

I'm quite happy with ML, it seems to be better in memory handling (especially virtual memory) than Lion.

-t

[P]

Depends on when you plan to replace it. If a replacement is a year or a little more away, I would stay on SL until the upgrade. If you plan to keep it for the forseeable future, you'll have to move to ML sooner or later.