Lion with 2 GB of RAM...

How well does Lion run on a MacBook with 2GB of RAM? I'm thinking about upgrading from SL, which runs really well and I just want opinions on performance. Thanks!

Depends. If you don't run so many concurrent applications as to run out of RAM Lion runs OK. With the minimum RAM it's mostly a combination of OS X memory management and user's application management.
It also helps to maintain ample free space on the hard drive. In your situation you need about 12-18 GBs of free space at all times.

Similar Messages

Can I upgrade to Lion with an Intel iMac with 1 GB RAM. I am getting conflicting info (from Apple advisors) whether I need 2GB -which I can do by adding 1, or 3 -which apparently I can't do. Anybody successful in upgrading to Lion with 1 or 2 GB Ram?

I am getting conflicting info (from Apple folks) whether I can upgrade to Lion with 1 GB Ram. Some are saying I need 2 (which I can do by adding memory) - or 3 (which I'm not sure I can do). Anyone running Lion with 1 GB? 2? I am at Leopard 10.5.8 to run some recording mixer which the company (Alesis) told me they weren't going to support drivers to Lion, but I guess they changed their minds. Am I clear on this? thanks.

The hardware requirements for Lion are an intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB RAM.
I wouldn't even both trying with 1GB, and even with 2GB Lion may struggle. If you intend to upgrade to Lion, can I suggest you max out your RAM. RAM is cheap at the moment.
Which model mac mini do you have?

Will logic pro x run on my mac mini dual core intel i5 with 4gb of ram and mountain lion ?

hi there guys,
will logic pro x run on my mac mini dual core intel i5 with 4gb of ram and mountain lion ?
I'm not sure if my machine is 64 bit - it is the current model base mac mini.
Many thanks for any help you can offer !
Simon

SkiJumptoes is right. 4GB is not enough to comfortably run Logic X.
Your Mac Mini will need DDR3 SODIMM RAM. That website seems incredibly steep though. I guess that's the price of finding it for you. You're better off going to any below:
http://www.ebuyer.com/191206-kingston-4gb-ddr3-1066mhz-laptop-memory-kvr1066d3s7 -4g?utm_source=google&utm_medium=products&gclid=COqM6KzdxbgCFcfJtAodoicARg
http://www.ballicom.co.uk/cmso4gx3m1a1600c11-corsair-value-select--memory--4-gb- -so-dimm-204pin--ddr3--1600-mhz--pc312800--cl11--15-v--unbuffered--nonecc.p87434 0.html?ref=5&gclid=CKyej_HdxbgCFQSS3godEjwAug

Does Mountain Lion checks for original hardware?? (problem with third-party ram)

Hi all,
I am wondering if Mountain Lion does a hardware check for original hardware. I did a RAM upgrade 6 months ago (from 2x2Gb to 2x4Gb Dolphin 1333Mhz DDR3 on a an early 2011 MacBook Pro) and everything went smooth, I really noticed the upgraded performance.
My problem started after a firmware update (I was running Mountain Leopard). The system became really unstable, with a lot of programs crashing randomly and some crash black screens. I then decided to update to Mountain Lion with a fresh install to solve all the problems and clean up my computer.
I did it from a bootable USB drive using Lion Disk Maker and following these instructions with the harddrive completely formatted: How To Make A Bootable Disk Or USB Drive Of OS X Mountain Lion. The installation got stuck half way through and exited without any error message. After checking the log I got an error code (FAILED TO VERIFY ESSENTIALS PACKAGE). After diggin for a couple of days I found out in an old apple support discussion (Failed To Verify Essentials Package On Installation) that the problem could be the non-original RAM. I then replaced the RAM with the original one and finally was able to install the new OS without problems.
After the OS install and setting up my usual programs, I decided to go back to the upgraded RAM for extra performance and the crashes came back as before. So the newer RAM clearly caused the system to become unstable. So right now I am using the original RAM, I want to get extra RAM but not sure if it was a sporadic problem or it will happen with all the third party memories. Going to the official tecnical service will cost me more than 130€ while buying a third party RAM is around 40€. Is it really Apple pushing us to get original parts or I am just unlucky? Did someone else experienced something similar?

Well, the upgraded RAM worked properly for 5 months straight. I don´t think it is a problem of dirt on the contacts or improper seating. Having the RAM not working properly the same day I want to update the OS, without touching it would be too much of a coincidence I think.
I am going to try the third party RAM again to be sure, trying to clean the contacts just in case, I will post the outcome later.

I am unable to install Lion. I have a Core 2 Duo iMac with 4GB of Ram and 120GB of free space - and no Bootcamp or other partitions - and yet repeatedly get the 'no recovery' error. Can anyone help?

I am unable to install Lion. I have a Core 2 Duo iMac with 4GB of Ram and 120GB of free space - and no Bootcamp or other partitions - and yet repeatedly get the 'no recovery' error. Can anyone help?

Run Disk Utility located in /Applications/Utilities before trying to upgrade to Lion in case the startup disk needs repairing.
Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks

Is my MacBook (mid 2010) with an Intel Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHZ) with 2GB of Ram going to run smoothly when I purchase OS X Lion?

I dont know if a 2.4 GHZ Core 2 duo with 2GB of RAM and a mid 2010 model of my Macbook will run smoothly with Mac OS X Lion. Can anybody help make my decision either i should upgrade from snow leopard to lion?

My advice... DO NOT BUY.... otherwise you will be like me... frustrated and horrified.... I am suffering .... and im the last person to be on such discussion forum... but now I am here... you may be able to guage my furstration. Snow Leapord is zillion times better than Lion... they should call it pu**y instead of lion.
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I have a BookPro 15 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB Ram, that's more slow after updating to X Lion 10.7.5

Hello
I have a BookPro 15 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB Ram, that's more slow after updating to X Lion 10.7.5
Is my hardware not good for this new OS ?
Can I upgrade my computer to Mountain Lion OS and make it faster ?

Mountain Lion won't make it faster. It may not even be compatible. Speed has a lot to do with what is installed, installation of utilities that actually slow you down, such as MacKeeper, or any cache cleaning softawre. Installation of utilities that you don't need such as anti-virus or firewall software. Peer2peer software. Other devices sharing the same network can slow it down too, make sure your network is secure, and you know what is sharing the network. Some websites may be slower on Safari, and an alternative browser* is needed.

2011 MBP with 8GB of RAM, generally slow under Lion, possibly thrashing

I have a 17" 2011 MBP with 8GB of RAM and the fastest CPU available at the time. It came with Snow Leopard, and it was really fast with basically everything I threw at it.
Since the upgrade to Lion, it has a general tendency to get really unresponsive. My workload hasn't fundamentally changed. Rather than just hope it's bugs in Lion that will get fixed, I'd like to see if anyone can advise me on things I might investigate, either to fix things myself, or to be more intelligent about identifying bugs I can report.
One thing I notice is that Time Machine backups will bring the system to its knees. Everything will be going along just fine, and then TM will kick on, and all my apps will stop responding. Once TM has finished, things will slowly come back to normal. There's a lot of disk activity, which I have assumed was swapping. Another thing that causes trouble is that mds (and a whole bunch of mdsworkers) will frequently kick on, and will slow down the system.
CPU load is always quite low, but free memory is always very low. (However, in some OS's Free Memory is misleading, because a lot of disk blocks are cached in RAM, so it's not really "used" either..)
What I can't really distinguish for sure is if the system is slow because of swapping/thrashing (which is what I assume) or if it's slowed down for some other reason related to disk activity.
Here are the apps I typically run:
- NetBeans (which is a pig, taking up over 1GB or real memory)
- Safari (which is also a pig, often taking up more than 1GB between the main Safari process and the Web Content process)
- Sometimes Parallels (2GB for the VM, and probably another 1GB for other stuff, because it's also a pig)
- kernel_task typically reports taking up over 1GB of real memory
- WindowServer also reports using 280MB
- various other small apps like Mail, NetNewsWire, Preview, Terminal, Adium, Smultron, Colloquy, none of which use much memory
I got the 8GB, because I knew I was going to use a lot of memory for stuff, and it was great under Snow Leopard. But with Lion, it just doesn't seem to be enough. Even with all of those huge processes, I can't believe that their working sets are really as big as their virtual and physical memory footprints seem to be. I mean it's not unusual for a process to have 2GB of virtual space but only a few 100MB of real memory, and some of that is shared object libraries, where the same physical memory is mapped into multiple processes. (Have shared object libraries stopped being physically shared under Lion?)
Are other people having similar trouble? Any suggested remedies? Any suggestions on how to investigate so I can see if there are any actual bugs?
I would like to understand why my system went from zippy to slow after I upgraded to Lion. Actually, quite a few things have broken. Time Machine has become a pig, bluetooth doesn't work reliably anymore, airport doesn't connect reliably anymore, and lots of little annoying bugs. But this is common for early point releases of new OS's, so I can't complain too much. But for Lion to have really regressed in memory management is definitely not good.

Safari, for what ever reason, has become a huge memory
pig. The longer you are using it the more memory it
gobbles up.
In Activity Monitor, check the Page outs and Swapped used.
This will tell you how much memory swapping is going on.
As for Time Machine, you may want to set your Parallels
HD image not to get backed up by Time Machine. May
help since it is a huge collection of files. But there have been
issues reported with Time Machine and Lion. I don't
use it myself and opt for the cloning methodology and
seperate data backup strategy. Also, in Spotlight
preferences under the Privacy Tab, I have added
my Windows VM folders, for same reason. Unless you really
need to find something on the windows VM volumes when you
don't have the Windows VM active, it just eats up alot
of disk access time.
For solving airport issues check this article:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20117247-263/fixing-airport-problems-in-os- x/?tag=mncol;txt
For Bluetooth devices, try removing them, and have them rediscovered if you
can.
Hopefully, this gives you a start on cleaning things up.

500 gb new hard drive with 4 gb ram .. why can't i install mountain lion???

Sorry for the question because I'm sure the answer is out there. But I've searched and searched and don't know why I can't download mountain lion!?!
I have a mid 07 macbook and have replaced the hard drive with 500 gb seagate and the memory with 4 gb ram. Shouldn't I be able to downloan it with those specs?? It keeps telling me I can't. I'm runinng 10.6.8 right now.
Thanks for your help in advance

It's mainly the video card. The Models 2,1 through 4,1 have video cards with non-upgradeable 32bit drivers. The model 5,1 Late 2008 and newer have at least the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 64bit drivers. Mountain Lion requires 64bit native drivers. Mountain Lion no longer supports Intel's GMA 950 or GMA X3100 graphics processors.
While Lion used some 32 bit and a lot of 64 bit code, Mountain Lion is pure 64 bit, which excludes more systems than Lion did. It's not something you can add memory to, for example, as it involves the base architecture.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57470261-263/older-64-bit-macs-out-of-the-p icture-for-mountain-lion/?tag=mncol;txt
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57387846-263/will-your-mac-run-mountain-lio n/

I bought this MacBook Pro 15.4" 1.83 GHz MA463LL/A with 2gb of RAM for real cheap on eBay because I'm poor and can't afford a new MACBOOK PRO and was wondering what everyone thinks about these laptops and what can and should I upgrade when I get money?

I bought this older MACBOOK PRO 15.4" 1.83 GHz with 2gb of RAM and Leopard 10.5 on eBay for real cheap because I don't have the money to buy a new one like I would like to do, and it comes with a disk to upgrade the OS to 10.6 and I was wondering what all I can and should upgrade (short of the whole computer) as I have the money to do so? Or did I just get really hosed?

You have the original Core Duo model. 2 GBs is the most RAM you can install, so the only thing you could upgrade would be the hard drive. Doing so is not a trivial task but you can find suitable hard drives and installation tutorials at OWC.
Since yours is a Core Duo model you can upgrade OS X to Snow Leopard, but not to Lion which requires a Core 2 Duo or better.

Anyone Else Notice How Tempermental the iMac is with 3rd Party RAM?

I recently upgraded my 2007 iMac so Lion could run more smoothly by adding RAM from Crucial.
The machine worked fine for a few days then I started experiencing kernal panics. I suspected my new RAM wasn't seeded properly. The last straw was when I shut down the system to re-seed the RAM and turned it back on, the machine beeped three times at few second intervals (which indicates a problem with RAM) and would not power on.
I moved it to a different slot--still no joy. In an effort to just get the machine started, I tried other 3rd party RAM that was compatible with the iMac that I had lying around. Still no go as the machine would beep loudly and not power on.
I finally found some RAM I had taken out of my 2007 Macbook Pro when I upgraded it. It was the original RAM that had come with the Macbook Pro. It worked like a charm.
But I'd like to upgrade my RAM. Guess I'll have to take a trip to the Apple store and buy from there--much more expensive though.
Anyone else have issues with RAM?

Mac's are not tempermental with third party RAM however they are sensitive to the following RAM issues:
1. Incorrect RAM specifications. RAM specs must exactly meet Apple's specifications, period! Installing incorrect RAM will cause KPs.
2. Unseated RAM. Unseated RAM will cause problems.
3. Failed RAM, this is more unusual however it's possible to have a RAM DIMM be defective of fail at a later date.
The only third party RAM I would not recommend for your machine is Kingston Value brand, this has been troublesome. However if you use OWC or Crucial both are great vendors and sell RAM that works assuming 1, 2 and 3 above.

Over 3GB of swap files with 16GB of RAM?

Just bought a MBPr with 16gb of RAM (more for futureproofing than any actual need right now). I'm constantly checking Activity Monitor and "Free RAM" is always around 8GB or more. I notice, however, that the "Swap used" totals are quite high. I don't have any pageouts so why do I have so much swapspace being consumed? With an SSD drive in here, should I not be worried that the OS is using swapspace so much when it probalby doesn't need to?
Thanks!

megagram wrote:
K as far as I understood modern OS's, they write memory to disk when physical RAM is exhausted. My physical RAM has not been physically exhausted and yet I still see high numbers of pagefiles. This is my concern; especially since I have an SSD that can't be replaced I'd rather not accelerate its demise with unecessary writes.
That's the thing - it is way more complicated than that. That is how virtual memory worked 20 years ago. It is best to avoid looking too closely at memory values. When people do that they start seeing problems that aren't there.
I'm not sure how you can say mountain lion's virtual memory is optimized for SSDs and that most of the swap space doesn't exist, even though it exists in the form of pagefiles without backing it up with concrete sources.
I say that because Apple is moving to SSDs for their new machines, so that is where the focus is. Even with 16 GB, any application could exhaust your memory if allowed. MacOS X uses those swap files to keep that from happening.

MacBook 2010 (white) freezing during boot up with 4 Gb RAM

I have a 13" MacBook 2009 (white) with 4 GB RAM installed by Apple. I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard without a hitch. However, when I upgraded to LION, the computer initially started to freeze sporadically during regular usage then simply froze just before the login screen every time it was rebooted. I took it in to the Apple Store and th Genius staff kept it for 2 days. They tested the RAM. Turns out that the MacBook only recognizes 2 GB of RAM now. Doesn't matter which 2 GB stick I put in which slot, it freezes on boot up. The computer boots up fine with either 2 GB stick in either slot. I would obviously prefer to have the computer run with all 4 GB. I have tried all the steps identified in the article "Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup" http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2570 to no avail, including the last step, "Perform an Erase and Install installation of Mac OS X as a last resort." I have searched through the Communities and tried all the suggested fixes. Nada. I have also upgraded to 10.7.3 which came out last week and retried all the steps. Again, nothing. Has anyone had a similar problem and, more importantly, found a fix? FYI, the computer is no longer on Apple Care and so replacing the motherboard is not an option. Thanks!

Hi Linc Davis, here are the results:
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}'
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple/{print $3}'
org.x.privileged_startx
org.postfix.master
org.ntp.ntpd
org.cups.cupsd
com.vix.cron
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple/{print $3}'
org.x.startx
org.openbsd.ssh-agent
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ ls -1A /e*/mach* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta} * L*/Fonts 2> /dev/null
/Library/Components:
/Library/Extensions:
/Library/Frameworks:
AEProfiling.framework
AERegistration.framework
AudioMixEngine.framework
NyxAudioAnalysis.framework
PluginManager.framework
TSLicense.framework
iLifeFaceRecognition.framework
iLifeKit.framework
iLifePageLayout.framework
iLifeSQLAccess.framework
iLifeSlideshow.framework
/Library/Input Methods:
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins:
Flash Player.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
JavaAppletPlugin.plugin
OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin.plugin
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin
SharePointWebKitPlugin.webplugin
Silverlight.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
/Library/Keyboard Layouts:
/Library/LaunchAgents:
/Library/LaunchDaemons:
com.apple.remotepairtool.plist
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist
/Library/PreferencePanes:
Flash Player.prefPane
Flip4Mac WMV.prefPane
/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools:
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper
/Library/QuickLook:
GBQLGenerator.qlgenerator
iWork.qlgenerator
/Library/QuickTime:
AppleIntermediateCodec.component
AppleMPEG2Codec.component
Flip4Mac WMV Advanced.component
Flip4Mac WMV Export.component
Flip4Mac WMV Import.component
/Library/ScriptingAdditions:
/Library/Spotlight:
GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporter
LogicPro.mdimporter
Microsoft Office.mdimporter
iWork.mdimporter
/Library/StartupItems:
/etc/mach_init.d:
/etc/mach_init_per_login_session.d:
/etc/mach_init_per_user.d:
Library/Address Book Plug-Ins:
Library/Fonts:
Library/Input Methods:
.localized
Library/Internet Plug-Ins:
Library/Keyboard Layouts:
Library/PreferencePanes:
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item'
iTunesHelper, Dropbox
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$

Snow Leopard to Lion with current Macbook Pro

Hi,
I wonder i can upgrade to Lion with my current hardware as follow. Please kindly advise.
Model Name:          MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:          MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          3 MB
Memory:          4 GB
Bus Speed:          800 MHz
Boot ROM Version:          MBP41.00C1.B03
SMC Version (system):          1.27f3
Many thanks in advance for your assistance.
Best regard
Desmond

absolutely ok to run LIon.
Double of the needed Ram you have already and CPU is what Lion needs.
MacAppstore will also tell you if your machine is not supported, prior to purchase.. it tries to block you from purchasing it, if so.

Just got girlfriend a new iPad2. Her iMac is a PowerPC G5 (Tiger version 10.4.11) with 512 mb RAM. What's the simplest, most efficient way to get her iPad2 up and running and synced to her Mac?

Just got girlfriend a new iPad2. Her iMac is a PowerPC G5 (Tiger version 10.4.11) with 512 mb RAM. What's the simplest, most efficient way to get her iPad2 up and running and synced to her Mac?

Most of the Apple store sales people and some of the genius bar people are only knowledgable on Apple's more recent offerings. They are not very knowledgable, I found, on older PowerPC based Apple computers, I'm afraid.
Here's the real scoop.
Your girlfriend's G5 can only install up to OS X 10.5 Leopard. This is the last compatible OS X version for PowerPC users.
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and OS X10.7 Lion are for newer Intel CPU Apple computers.
Early iMac G5's can only have up to 2 GBs of RAM.
Later iMac G5's (2005-2006) could take up to 2.5 GBs of RAM
2 GBs of RAM will run OS X 10.5 Leopard just fine.
The very latest iTunes (10.5.2) can be installed and runs on both PowerPC and Intel CPU Macs.
However, there are certain new iTunes feature that won't work without an Intel Mac.
One of iOS and iTunes feature is sync'g wirelessly over WiFi.
This will not work unless you have an iDevice running iOS 5 and Intel Mac running 10.6 Snow Leopard or better.
Although, I was disappointed I would not be able to do this with my G4 Mac, it's not a biggie problem for me.
So, your girlfriend's computer should be fine for what she intends to use it for.
The Apple people either just plain didn't know or we're trying to get you to think about buying a new Mac.
At least, as of now, not truly necessary.
If Apple, at some later point, drops support for PowerPC users running 10.5, then would be the time to consider a new or "newer" Intel CPU Mac.
My planned Mac computer upgrade is seeking out a " newer" last version G5 for my "new" Mac.
I can't afford, right now, to replace all of my core PowerPC software with Intel versions, so I need to stick with the older PowerPC Macs for the time being. The last of the G5's is what I seek.

Lion with 2 GB of RAM...

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