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I have a Mac Mini 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. It's not the latest generation of the Mac Mini, but it's reasonably fast.

Is it worth upgrading to Snow Leopard, given that my Mac Mini is not the latest gen? Will my box become slower or faster?

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Snow Leopard is only $30. You can do a clean install from the upgrade disc. – ephilip Dec 27 '09 at 23:54
Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered! – Diago Dec 28 '09 at 7:45
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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Initially it was not stable and broke a lot of my applications (XBMC, Hulu and many others). It now appears stable (@ v10.6.2)

It is a little faster but no where near the XP/Vista -> Win7 level of improvement. Think of it more as a service pack than a new OS release. With hindsight I would have skipped the time I wasted buying/ installing it

Do spend the $$ on a memory upgrade. I did mine from NewEgg.com and it was ~$40 per machine for 4GB. Also think about an SSD when the prices finally fall

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Just wondering: are you saying that Windows 7 is significantly faster than XP? (I am not saying it's not; I really just don't know.) – Arjan Dec 28 '09 at 0:53
Win7 is very much faster than XP in terms of the UI: opening/ closing explorer etc. Apparently Microsoft did a lot of work to make the memory footprint smaller and ensure more is done in parallel so there less waiting on I/O Win7 also has an OS X like task bar which you can pin applications to + they can show notification. E.g. Thunderbird lights up when new email arrives On the same hardware (2GHz Intel Mac Mini) my main machine feels a lot faster with Win7 than OS X. I still run OS X on my other two machines (MacBook Pro + another mini) for better power management etc – Paul Lockwood Dec 28 '09 at 19:31
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up vote 5 down vote

Faster. Boot times are significantly improved, and the finder has been rewritten and optimized. It also has a smaller install footprint. It doesn't feel blindingly faster like Win Vista to Win 7, but it feels snappier.

I upgraded an old early '06 iMac 17" which has a Core Duo (not even Core 2 Duo) and it's very happy. I do recommend 2GB RAM though.

It's also not much money, and really not much effort.

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up vote 3 down vote

Overall, if you not running Mac OS X 10.5, then a Snow Leopard upgrade would be quite beneficial if you met the system requirements (for example, you have at least 1 Gb of memory).

If you are running 10.5, then it still would help to some degree, for example Time Machine has been tremendously upgraded to reduce the time a backup takes... (Sometimes up to 50% - 65% faster!)

But those improvements are incremental from Leopard (10.5).

So if you are running 10.4, then definitely upgrade assuming your hardware mets the requirements... After all, it's only $30....

But if you are running 10.5, I would still recommend it, but take a good look to see if it'll help your workflow, or system.

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