UKC

I keep getting messages - mostly from Google companies including Drive and YouTube, but others too - that my browser is no longer supported and I'm not getting the best or fastest experience.

I've got a an iMac 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory.
And I'm running Mac OSX 10.5.8 and running Safari version 5.0.6

I sure my machine isn't fast enough to upgrade to the latest version of Safari.

I'm wondering what to do for an upgrade - download Firefox? download Chrome?

Your advice would be appreciated, thanks.

In reply to rubbercrumb:

I'm on MountainLion and Safari 6. I still get these messages from YouTube... but then it carries on as normal and I certainly don't see any effect on my experience.

I'm up to date as far as I can go on Safari without upgrading my OS.

In reply to rubbercrumb:

Crumbs - that's a bit rubbish. You can't update to the latest browser because your OS is out of date? I would move to a different browser.

In reply to rubbercrumb:

I'd switch to another browser. Even the new safari is a pain. Someone should have told apple that HTML is a standard not a suggestion!

In reply to rubbercrumb:

It sounds like you should probably consider some software updates. Your idea to use Firefox or Chrome is a good one but they no longer support the very old version of OS X that you're using. Opera supported it for slightly longer but they've now stopped too.

Not only are you going to struggle to find a decent, up to date browser, plugins like Flash won't give you updates either, which opens you up to even more vulnerabilities and Apple stopped releasing security patches for the underlying OS a long time ago.

You're probably best served by paying Apple for an upgrade to the newest version of OS X that your hardware supports. This article is about Apple stopping support for a newer version than what you're currently running but most of its advice probably still applies to you: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/03/snow-leopard-updates-are-probably-done...

If you carry on using your current setup, I would recommend being very cautious. Internet banking probably wouldn't be a good idea and it would probably be wise to disable Flash and Java. If you can find an old version of Firefox or Chrome that will install and run, I would recommend installing an extension like NoScript that gives you the choice of where you allow JavaScript to run.

In reply to rubbercrumb:

Google are quite aggressive/progressive in what they support in terms of older browsers, This is what they say:

"We support the current and previous major releases of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we begin supporting that version and stop supporting the third most recent version."

So what does "support" mean? Well in Google's case it means that if something works on an older browser version then fine, but if not then they ain't going to fix it.

OS X Leopard is really old - I think it was the OS installed when I got my iMac six years ago. You might be able to upgrade the memory - go to 8Gb if you can - there are online checkers. I'd do that first then find the newest version of the OS you can upgrade to. I've done most of the versions since then with the exception of Mavericks, it's generally painless.

In reply to rubbercrumb:

You can put at least 4 and probably 6 or 8Gb in that model, and it will run any OS up to 10.10 (and will run 10.11 "El Capitan" when it is out in a couple of months. Adding RAM is cheap and very easy. I'm guessing this is your model:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-2-duo-2.8-24-inc... but if not have a look around until you get the right one and check the maximum installable RAM.

If you go to iFixit.com and look at the same model there are walkthroughs of how to add more RAM (which can be bought from Crucial or OWC at low cost).

My advice if you can is to shift to 10.9 Mavericks. Your machine OS isn't supported any more (=no security updates) and 10.9 is probably the sweet spot between features/security and resource use, so you won't get slowdowns like you will on Yosemite (10.10). The trouble with these older iMacs is the hard drives are big and slow, but it's a challenge to get into them to replace them with SSDs - if you are handy with a torx driver then that will completely rejuvenate your machine.

Also, download Chrome or Firefox anyway - not all sites play well with Safari.

HTH

cheers

b

In reply to ben b:

thank you. Good advice here. I upgraded the RAM on my Mac before this. It was easy enough, just had to be careful of static, as I recall, but it was 10 years ago.

I'll try it - I'm not ready to shell out for a new machine. This one is superb, still.

regards