upgrading

Matt isn't sure his 2013 MacBook Pro is upgradable to Yosemite. Leo says it is, and all he needs to do is check the Apple App Store.

Mike called to ask Leo if he should put any money into his five year old MacBook or just upgrade. Leo says that it's high time to upgrade to a new Mac since he's going to want to move forward with Yosemite. If he can afford a new one, that's the best option. The connectors of a laptop can start going out after that time.

Roy bought Windows 7 for his new laptop. He hears that he will be able to upgrade to Windows 10, but why would he do that since he walked away from Windows 8? Leo says that Microsoft has made a lot of fixes to Windows that make it more like what it was before Windows 8's radical redesign. Users with Windows 7 and 8 will be able to upgrade for free. Leo says that Windows 10, which he has been using, has made major strides. That being said, he shouldn't feel the need to upgrade right away. He can wait a few months after it launches.

David has a Windows 7 Professional Machine and he's about to upgrade his computer. He wants to migrate everything over. Leo says that there is a Windows Migration Assistant, which is currently entitled Windows Easy Transfer. When he runs that, and it'll walk him through it by connecting both computers via Ethernet.

Vicki keeps getting notified about doing an upgrade to Yosemite. But being a private investigator, she's afraid to upgrade because it could break the software she uses. Leo says that's a legitimate fear. In general, if she's doing work on it, it's good to always be slow in performing major updates. She could consider doing it in between cases or while on vacation, perhaps. A major upgrade like that can break her software, or with a utility like iDVD, Apple may decide not to support it any longer and not include it in the next version of the operating system.

Dave wants to know if he can downgrade his Google Nexus 7 from Lollipop because the update has really slowed down his tablet considerably. Leo says that he could try rooting it, and then put on a custom recovery that will allow him to do it. Dave should check out XDA Developer Forum for tips on how.

Marilyn has a 4 year old Mac laptop running Yosemite and she's having trouble with her account. She can't open anything. Leo says that's because she needs to update all of her apps now. She says she tried that, but she can't get them to update. Leo says she needs to be an Admin to update software.

The chatroom says that there may be two copies of the software on the hard drive since the app store doesn't update the old version, it just installs a new version. If so, she may not be opening the right version. So Marilyn should remove the old version of the software.

Jay wants to know if he should upgrade to OS X Yosemite. Leo says that it's always best to take a wait and see attitude. Some believe that waiting until the second update is a wise idea as the first update breaks things, and the second makes it usable. But Leo hasn't had issues.

Sam wants to know how to increase the hard drive space on his TiVo. He's using the TiVo Premiere and it's running out of space. Leo says that AVS Forum is an ideal site for tips on doing that. There's also Weaknees.com, which sells TiVos with upgraded drives and sells the parts for the upgrade which are "blessed" to run on TiVos.

Jonathan has a laptop running Windows 7 and wants to double his RAM to 4GB. Leo says that's a good idea but he wouldn't go beyond that if he's running 32 bit. Online sources include Crucial.com, TigerDirect, MicroCenter, there's plenty of others. But Crucial will help him pick the right memory for his specific computer and has tools to help him install it.