Mac Mini 2.1 Snow Leopard vs Lion

I have today sucessfully installed 4gb ram (2x2) on my Mac Mini 1.83ghz core 2 duo. I am now in the process of installing Snow Leopard, and I have a question that I need to find an answer to:
What is the best OS X for my old Mac Mini, Snow Leopard or Lion?
The most demanding planned usage with the Mac Mini is photo processing with Aperture. I need Lion for the latest Aperture update (3.3), but I would rather stay with Snow Leopard and Aperture 3.2, than Lion and a sluggish Mac.
I am grateful for any advice on this matter!

Thank you both for taking time to answer me!
I have also realized the connection between Lion, App Store, and Aperture 3.3. Aperture 3.3 is amazingly inexpensive as a download from App Store. If I am to go for Snow Leopard I need to purchase an Aperture 3 DVD for three times the costs of the App Store version. Now I understand the idea behind the extremely low priced downloadable OS X Lion and similarly low priced Aperture 3.3 = one needs to buy the newest Mac with max ram to be able to utilize the software... 

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  • Need to boot broken Mac-Mini using retail Snow Leopard 10.6 DVD

    Hi,
    In Summary:
    ==========
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    The complete story:
    ==================
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    ==========================
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    I had a similar discussion recently with another user.
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  • I have updated to maverick from mountain lion.initially my mac book pro was snow leopard.the multitrack touch pad swapping the page is not happening in finder,it is only working in safari.please help me how to get that swiping gesture in  finder

    i have updated to maverick from mountain lion.initially my mac book pro was snow leopard.the multitrack touch pad swapping the page to get back to previous page is not happening in finder,it is only working in safari.please help me how to get that swiping gesture in  finder

    Hi..
    I repled to you here >  https://discussions.apple.com/message/25598596#25598596
    Please do not start duplicate topics. It makes it that much harder to assist you.

  • Buying a new mac with snow leopard vs. lion?

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    As Paul indicated, there's no sense in waiting. Lion, while announced, still has not received a release date. In addition the current architecture (Sandy Bridge) is the latest and greatest. Intel and Apple are always working on new stuff, so even if you wait for Lion there's a new machine being assembled in China the day you purchase the "latest and greatest."
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    Can I up grade my existing software on my I mac 9,1 to snow leopard & then to mountain lion software ?

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    If my experience with a similarly aged computer is any indicator, you'll notice an immediately speed hit once you've upgraded to Mavericks. Each OS X update tends to be more memory hungry than the previous and my 2007 iMac wasn't happy with Lion until I upgraded the RAM and at that point Lion performance roughly matched Snow Leopard. Mountain Lion and then Mavericks shaved some speed off again. Mavericks on the 2007 iMac was okay for the most part but switching between applications was slow as was the fileselector.
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