Upgrade or Replace 2006 Macbook Pro

You can easily run Snow Leopard on your present computer. You just need to upgrade the RAM to 1GB or more (the maximum is 2GB, and you might be pleasantly surprised at how sprightly your machine would become with 2GB installed). Then install Snow Leopard and be happy.

The MacBox set does not all need to be installed unless you use all the additional applications in iWork or iLife. Snow Leopard itself is fairly compact.

Yes you can upgrade the hard drive.

What you need to do first is to ensure you have a complete backup of all your personal files, photos, music, apps, etc.

You might be better getting a decent sized external drive and use this for all your personal data, apps etc and also installing SL on this to use as the default startup drive. This can be either USB or firewire but would need to be formatted under the GUID scheme etc.

After this is set up you could strip quite a bit of the software off the internal drive to free up space.

Neville

Snow Leopard requires only that you have an Intel processor, which you do. No processor upgrade is necessary. (None is possible, either).

Unlike Neville, I don't recommend using an external hard drive as your primary boot drive with a notebook computer. Doing so would sharply limit the portability of your MBP, since you'd always have to carry the external drive around with you. Anyone who carries a notebook computer is far better off upgrading its internal drive to hold as much as s/he needs to have with him/her while moving around. But if portability isn't an issue for you because your computer always stays in the same place, then Neville's suggestion is a good one. The internal hard drive in your MBP is not considered by Apple to be a user-replaceable part, and unless you're a reasonably capable do-it-yourselfer it may not be something you'll want to tackle. DIY instructions are here:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Model-A1150-Ha rd-Drive-Replacement/486/1

But as others have already said, you don't need to install all (or any) of the Box Set applications if there are some that wouldn't be useful to you. You may be able to get by with your present hard drive. Just be sure to keep 10-15% of it available as free space at all times.

I would second the opinion to upgrade the ram to at 2GB. You will definitely feel a big difference between 1GB and 2GB. I would also recommend replacing the hard drive with a larger capacity, and while you are at it, go with a 7200rpm hard drive as you'll also definitely feel the speed increase with the faster hard drive and hard drives are pretty cheap these days. It'll feel like you are getting a new computer!