I have an old macbook pro on its last legs OS X ver 10.6.8 and have some questions:

1. If I have 4gb RAM memory and 256gb on the hard drive with 41 gb available, should I download OSX mavericks 10.9.2 from apple store. It will take up a further 5gb. Am I able to do this on my old mac here? If I do it will any files be lost? Are there any implications of updating the operating system? One of the reasons I want to do it is to enable me to download 'memory clean' from apple store. Any opinions on this are appreciated.

2. My laptop is running slow and with 41 gb remaining whats the best way for me to clean up the hard drive and free up some of the memory. Last year I transferred all my movies, pornography and photos to an external hard drive but this old thing is still running slow.

3. Finally, the dvd player inside the laptop is jammed/ broken. Am I best to buy an external dvd player. The apple mac store guy told me ages ago that the apple dvd ext plug in device is no good for my macbook pro. He said that I should perhaps buy another brand of dvd player and plug in as usb. Is this correct.

thanks

I have an old macbook pro on its last legs OS X ver 10.6.8 and have some questions:

OSX mavericks 10.9.2

Am I able to do this on my old mac here?

It's quite possible that the older MBP won't run the most recent OS. I know my older model desktop iMac is at 10.6.8 and that's its limit - no further OS upgrade possible.

I think somewhere on the Mac site you'll find the info although it could take some navigating around to find it.

Edit [another thought] And I know that Macintosh, in its infinite wisdom, is now limiting new Macs to the most recent OS they're shipped with, so it's not possible to downgrade the system on a new Mac to match an older one you might have that won't take the newest system.

The DVD drive in my old MBP died years ago. You can buy an external drive BUT make sure it is mac compatible (most aren't) and get one that runs off the mains power supply, since there isn't enough power from one USB port to run the external. I found out the fard way, so had to get an adapter to use both USB ports, leaving none available when using the external drive.

Answer no2 freeing up more disk space is not going to make it any faster especially with 41 gb left try looking at startup see if a lot of programs are set to startup on boot

I just spoke to guy in apple store and he said that I can only update OS to 10.7 Can anyone verify this based on the old MBP that I purchased in 2008 described above