Trying to determine if an older laptop is compatible with OX 7 Lion to move to Icloud.

You have to purchase Lion and download from the Mac App Store. Use the App Store application in your Applications folder or on the Dock. Sign in with your Apple ID and password. Locate the Lion application then purchase - $30.00 - and download.

Lion System Requirements

• Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
• 2GB of memory
• OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
• 7GB of available space
• Some features require an Apple ID; terms apply.

OS X Lion system requirements

To use Lion, make sure your computer has the following:

• An Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
• Mac OS X v10.6.6 or later to install via the Mac App Store (v10.6.8 recommended); you can install without Mac OS X v10.6 by using an OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive, available on the Apple Online Store
• 7 GB of available disk space
• 2 GB of RAM

If your Mac does not meet these requirements, you will need to upgrade your Mac before installing Lion.

There is no way to "TEST DRIVE" Mac OS Lion, in order to use it, you have to "buy it" (wink).

Another consideration is the RAM memory - although the minimum says 2 GB, it is a real minimum; you'd be much happier with 4 GB. If your Macbook is early 2009, it will allow 4 GB (if it is the same model I have) and Lion works well with 4 GB on it - it was slow with the original 2 GB though.

What specific model do you have? Open System Profiler in Utilities folder and post what you find displayed for Model Identifier.

You can install up to 4 GBs, 2 - 200-pin PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 SO-DIMMs, however, only 3 GBs will be recognized.