What to do before updating 10.6.8 to Mountain Lion

See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps. Neither Office 2004 or Quicken 2003 will work after Snow Leopard. You should plan on upgrading them.

Before upgrading you should at least repair the hard drive and permissions. Personally, I would recommend backing up to an external drive, erasing the hard drive, and reinstalling Snow Leopard then upgrading.

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility

1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.

2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.

3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.

4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag

it to the Destination entry field.

5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to

the Source entry field.

6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.

Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Office X, and even earlier version than Office 2004, won't work with Mountain Lion.

If you can update to Mountain Lion (now 2 ½ years old and $20), you should consider updating to Yosemite, as it is free.

Maximize your RAM.

I thought I could not go from 10.6 to Yosemite without first upgrading to 10.7 and now I understand 10.8.

Incorrect.

If your Mac meets the requirements for 10.8, 10.9 or 10.10, you can upgrade from 10.6.8. The requirements are all the same.

Note, 10.9 is no longer being offered.

With Yosemite, and just for the next 6 months, you can even try out Office 2016: http://products.office.com/en-US/mac/mac-preview

Dennis Robinson4 wrote:

Should I update applications like Microsoft office X and Quicken 2003 before the update or is it ok to do it after? Any other suggestions?

Microsoft Office X is now ancient; you should upgrade to Office 2011 or download one of the free alternatives, such as LibreOffice.

I ran Quicken Deluxe 2002 for years and now I use Quicken 2007 for Mac, since it is now compatible with Snow Leopard through Yosemite.

You can obtain it for $15 using the Intuit online chat function.

Use the chat feature for Quicken for Mac: Quicken 2007 for Lion: Shopping and Buying: Buying Quicken on this page:

https://quicken.custhelp.com/app/contact/plvl1/win

Since you are using Quicken 2003 you first need to convert the data files while still running in Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard:

Download Quicken 2006 (PPC) from Intuit:

https://quicken.intuit.com/support/help/patching/quicken-2006-manual-updates--ma c-/GEN82200.html

Open your data file in Quicken 2006 (PPC) and it will automatically convert it to Quicken 2005/6/7 data file.

AVOID Quicken 2015 for Mac as it is a misleading upgrade of Quicken Essentials for Mac (and not Quicken 2007), which is generally loathed by all real Quicken for Mac 2007 and previous users!