Recommended latest OSX for Late 2008 Macbook Pro

You can purchase Snow Leopard from the Apple Store and update it to 10.6.8.

PPC apps will not run in Lion or Mountain Lion so, if you have a lot of old software, you should stop there.

If you want the latest OS you can skip Lion and go directly to 10.8.3 via the App Store app found in Snow Leopard. None of Apple's newest software or OS's ship on DVD's and all must be purchased and downloaded using the App Store. If you have a slow internet server stop at Snow Leopard.

Mr Gasp wrote:

but is it true that having Snow Leopard and not anything later is the safest for

my system?

I agree.

Read all the pros and cons I have to say about it here.

Snow Leopard will be around for quite some time more, then when it starts dropping off like 10.5 is, you should look at new machine.

OS X 10.4/10.5 need to upgrade, 10.6.8 ok still

You have enough RAM to upgrade to Mountian Lion. While it is true that Snow Leopard will run "Smoother" on your MacBook Pro, Mountain Lion will work fine with 4 GB of RAM.

I do not think you can upgrade that computer to 8GB of RAM though, specs on the Apple support page show upgradable to 4GB only.

One statement that is probably not true is that Snow Leopard will "be around for awhile." If you look at Apple's history, they upgrade and move on. This is not Microsoft and they will not hold on to an OS for years to come, they will leave you in the past if you stick to a 4 year old OS.

If you are pretty much all apple, you should consider upgrading and getting aboard with iCloud, messages, and the other cool services Mountain Lion brings to the table.

In my opinion, Mountain Lion is the best OS Apple has released to date. If you are reluctant to upgrade, do a Time Machine Backup of your current system and install Mountain Lion. If you don't like it, re-install the original OS and restore it from that backup.

I do not think you can upgrade that computer to 8GB of RAM though, specs on the Apple support page show upgradable to 4GB only.

A late 2008 MacBook Pro can be upgraded to 8 Gigs of RAM: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3

I have a Mid/Late 2007 MacBook Pro and it has been updated to a Max of 6 Gigs:

In my opinion, Mountain Lion runs better on my 2007 MacBook Pro than Snow Leopard. I have also noted that it runs cooler. (Note: I don't need to run older PPC only applications.)

CS3 and above are compatible with ML.

See this: http://roaringapps.com/