Roughly 3 weeks with Sonoma on my late 2009 iMac

[chevyboy60013]

Well it has been roughly 3 weeks with my late 2009 iMac with it running macOS 14 Sonoma. It has a 3.06ghz core 2 duo processor, 8gb of ram and a 500gb platter hard drive.

So far I have been rather impressed how well that old of an iMac can run macOS Sonoma, especially with it having a platter hard drive and not a ssd. It opens apps reasonably quickly, and handles 5-7 tabs open on safari along with the mail app open, and I have several email accounts in the mail app. It even handles facebook well, as resource hungry facebook is with their spying and stuff. I would like to install a ssd drive in it just to make it better, and the fact I am assuming that is the original drive, and it would already have been installed, however I am not comfortable with having to remove the screen to install it, so will need to wait for my friend who works on macs daily and knows how to install it damage free. Didn't lose the wired keyboard and mouse at all even without a usb hub. One main reason why it appears that I would need the 2.0 usb hub to install it on my mid 2010 MacBook Pro and did not need it for the iMac?? The iMac is running oclp 1.30 and I have macOS monterey on my mid 2010 MacBook Pro with oclp 1.30. Kinda hope and wish I could just do an ota upgrade to sonoma on the mid 2010 MacBook Pro, however monterey works so good on the MacBook..... if I had brains I would leave it alone.

So far though I am very happy with my $45.00 iMac, with oclp and Sonoma, and happy with my $35.00 MacBook pro with oclp and Monterey for now.

 

[Ben J.]

I'd say 1st priority would be the HD/SSD swap. Even an old one would make a big difference. Leave it to your friend. Even though it's not very difficult, there is a risk of damage. Make it a 1TB. An extra 8GB of ram wouldn't hurt the imac or your wallet either.

(Btw, I did the SSD swap on a 2010 imac once, and ran onto trouble with fans speeding up because the imac didn't get temperature info from the SSD. I'm sure there's a fix. Mention it to your friend.)

 

[Joeronzk]

well, very surprised Sonoma could run such an old Mac with this level of performance.

 

[jdoyle]

Interesting. Almost tempted to try on my 2015iMac 16Gb Ram 1TB SSD/HD 27inch. I'm on Monterey last one it supports. It runs very nicely and has most of the modern features I need.

 

[chevyboy60013]

well, very surprised Sonoma could run such an old Mac with this level of performance.

It ran it on 4gb of ram that it had when I got it, but it was slow. not painfully slow but slower than I wanted. It is slower than my mid 2010 MacBook Pro running Monterey, but my MacBook Pro has a 500gb ssd, and not a platter drive so that is to be expected. Kinda want to attempt Sonoma on the MacBook pro, but also do not want to ruin a nicely performing laptop and have to start over.

 

[WhispWater]

Hey,

I have an Late 2009 iMac, I installed Monterey, and it's good, do you recommend to install Sonoma ?

 

[VitoBotta]

Is it possible to replace the hard drive with an SSD in such iMac?

 

[Sciuriware]

Well it has been roughly 3 weeks with my late 2009 iMac with it running macOS 14 Sonoma. It has a 3.06ghz core 2 duo processor, 8gb of ram and a 500gb platter hard drive.

So far I have been rather impressed how well that old of an iMac can run macOS Sonoma, especially with it having a platter hard drive and not a ssd. It opens apps reasonably quickly, and handles 5-7 tabs open on safari along with the mail app open, and I have several email accounts in the mail app. It even handles facebook well, as resource hungry facebook is with their spying and stuff. I would like to install a ssd drive in it just to make it better, and the fact I am assuming that is the original drive, and it would already have been installed, however I am not comfortable with having to remove the screen to install it, so will need to wait for my friend who works on macs daily and knows how to install it damage free. Didn't lose the wired keyboard and mouse at all even without a usb hub. One main reason why it appears that I would need the 2.0 usb hub to install it on my mid 2010 MacBook Pro and did not need it for the iMac?? The iMac is running oclp 1.30 and I have macOS monterey on my mid 2010 MacBook Pro with oclp 1.30. Kinda hope and wish I could just do an ota upgrade to sonoma on the mid 2010 MacBook Pro, however monterey works so good on the MacBook..... if I had brains I would leave it alone.

So far though I am very happy with my $45.00 iMac, with oclp and Sonoma, and happy with my $35.00 MacBook pro with oclp and Monterey for now.

Well, well, SONOMA might probably NOT be the worst OS. Hope the other person learns about this thread.
;JOOP!