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Message: [QUOTE="honestone, post: 1546737, member: 17069"] I understand what you are saying, but you are the one that made the original jump from OS 10.7.5 to OS 10.12.0, and you upgraded in place. There have been other folks on these forums who wanted to make that same jump, but I, and others, advised against it, instead recommending an intermediate upgrade. I even stated that a couple of times in these exchanges between you and I. There is nothing wrong with El Capitan, as there is nothing wrong with Yosemite, nor Sierra. The issue is that most folks want a "1 button/keystroke" solution to everything, and that includes OS upgrades. The keys to a successful upgrade, and subsequent "within the same OS" upgrades, are what I have stated above, and the procedure I follow: 1. Keep third party apps up to date. Whenever one wants/needs to obtain an update, [B]DO NOT [/B]go through a third party. It is always, always best to go to the developer's/company's site for the upgrade. It has been known that using a third party to do this can cause issues, with some additional "crap" being installed. I [B]ALWAYS, ALWAYS [/B]go to the developer's/company's site for such updates/upgrades. Yes, not a 1 button solution, but it is safe and secure. 2. Do disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs on a [B]frequent[/B] basis. 3. Make backups [B]often[/B]. And of course, take the necessary steps when upgrading the Mac OS from one "type" to another, ie, Lion to Mountain Lion, Mavericks to Yosemite, El Capitan to Sierra, etc. And a clean, fresh, "virgin" installation of that newer Mac OS is the preferred way to go. Yes, a lot more work, and not a "1 keystroke" method, but one's chances of success are greatly improved. So, I think it would be a wise move for you to first upgrade from Lion to Yosemite, but take the necessary steps. Once you are using Yosemite, follow the 3 things I mentioned just above. Then, when you are ready, you could upgrade to either El Capitan or Sierra. I'll repeat one more time: there [B]was/is[/B] nothing wrong with Yosemite, El Capitan, or Sierra, It's a matter of how committed one is to keeping their machines up to date, in "tip top" shape, etc. But that is going to require time and effort, not a 1 keystroke process. Finally, regarding memory usage and the Mac OS, both of my Macs have only 4 gig of RAM, and typically Sierra takes about 2 gig of that. I don't have demanding processing needs like you do, but 3.3 gig for Sierra sounds like a lot. In actuality, there could be some apps that use memory at start up, even though they are not "active". For example, there are a couple of processes that run when I launch my machine that are not OS-related: TechTool Protection, 1 Password Mini, etc. Given that my machine usage is primarily EMails and surfing the net, I am fine with that. But, I understand what you are saying. You might want to check what stuff is launched when you start up your machine, Just go to Activity Monitor (contained inside the Utilities folder, which is within your Applications folder), and you can see how much RAM is taken up by various processes. Additionally, some apps to not "give up/release" all the memory they have used when one quits such apps. That seems to be less and less of an issue, though. [/QUOTE]

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