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Leopard Upgrade Question

C

Chrysis X

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Okay, to start out, I've never owned a Mac before, but some of my friends love to use Macs, so I figured I'd try it out. I'm thinking I should get a Macbook Pro, but I have a question. If I were to get a Macbook Pro right now with the current edition of OS X, will I be able to upgrade to leopard when it comes out without having to upgrade my hardware? Also, how much does the upgrade cost? I figured that if I had to upgrade much hardware, or it was too expensive, I would wait until Leopard comes out before getting a Mac, so that's why I was wondering these things.

Any help is appreciated, Thanks! 🙂
 
Chrysis X said:
Okay, to start out, I've never owned a Mac before, but some of my friends love to use Macs, so I figured I'd try it out. I'm thinking I should get a Macbook Pro, but I have a question. If I were to get a Macbook Pro right now with the current edition of OS X, will I be able to upgrade to leopard when it comes out without having to upgrade my hardware? Also, how much does the upgrade cost? I figured that if I had to upgrade much hardware, or it was too expensive, I would wait until Leopard comes out before getting a Mac, so that's why I was wondering these things.

Any help is appreciated, Thanks! 🙂
Click to expand...

No, Leopard will run very, very well on current hardware. It's expected to run on machines up to 5 years old although those machines will have to do without some of the fancy graphical stuff - it'll work just fine though. It'll positively scream on current Macs.

Leopard will most likely cost US$129 when it's released although there is rumours that iLife '07 and possibly iWork '07 could be bundled into the OS (although I don't think so) and that could up the price a bit.

There is no "Upgrade" version of Leopard, you have the option to upgrade when you install it over Tiger but you can also use the same disc to install on a blank HDD in a Mac.

So long as you get 1GB or more of RAM (most Macs do nowadays) you'll not have to upgrade any hardware to run Leopard - it's not like Vista you see... 😉
 
The current MacBook Pro (as well as machines much, much older than that) will run Leopard just fine with no hardware upgrades needed. Past versions of OS X have cost $129 for a single license, but final pricing for Leopard has not yet been announced.
 
Chrysis X said:
If I were to get a Macbook Pro right now with the current edition of OS X, will I be able to upgrade to leopard when it comes out without having to upgrade my hardware?
Click to expand...
No, Leopard won't be out for a few months, so none of the current machines will be able to run it at all. You'll have to buy a whole new machine. There won't be any boxed version. 😛

Sorry, just being sarcastic. Of course the current machines will run them. Apple is a hardware company first, but Leopard will run just fine on any machine made in the last couple of years. They don't expect you to buy brand new computers just to run the new OS. No one would be able to use it. I've been playing with the developers version on my 2 year old G5 and it's actually faster than Tiger. I know you're a newbie, but come on, do you really think Apple would release a new OS that 99% of it's users couldn't use? The only thing the new machines will have is a faster system bus and slightly faster components like the video card and RAM. Plus, they won't be out until about May, after Intel's Santa Rosa comes out. If you want a laptop now, get it. 1-2GB of RAM will be plenty to run Leopard, which will be about $130 for the upgrade. Updated versions of iLife should be out by then too, for probably less than $100.

Wait if you want, or buy now if you need it, either way you're good to go.
 
solvs said:
No, Leopard won't be out for a few months, so none of the current machines will be able to run it at all. You'll have to buy a whole new machine. There won't be any boxed version. 😛

Sorry, just being sarcastic. Of course the current machines will run them. Apple is a hardware company first, but Leopard will run just fine on any machine made in the last couple of years. They don't expect you to buy brand new computers just to run the new OS. No one would be able to use it. I've been playing with the developers version on my 2 year old G5 and it's actually faster than Tiger. I know you're a newbie, but come on, do you really think Apple would release a new OS that 99% of it's users couldn't use? The only thing the new machines will have is a faster system bus and slightly faster components like the video card and RAM. Plus, they won't be out until about May, after Intel's Santa Rosa comes out. If you want a laptop now, get it. 1-2GB of RAM will be plenty to run Leopard, which will be about $130 for the upgrade. Updated versions of iLife should be out by then too, for probably less than $100.

Wait if you want, or buy now if you need it, either way you're good to go.
Click to expand...

It's faster than Tiger? That's really cool. Tiger is really fast, and I figured that someday Apple might not be able to squeeze any more performance out of their code.
 
Apple does something with their upgrades which is very cool. You can buy a Tiger (and probable Leopard) upgrade for $129. However, if your family (or you) have several Macs, you can upgrade all for $199! it is called a 'Family Pack'. They do the same for iWork and iLife. How fair is that? Someone recently asked why Apple seemed to trust their users. One reason is because they do not try to exploit them.
 
I've got a 4 year old iBook G3 with only 256 RAM. Any thoughts on memory needed for Leopard? At least 1 GB? Thanks, and I can't wait to see Leopard!
 
cant wait for Leopard... got two MBP's (mine and wife's) running Tiger, and the kitchen iMac which badly needs tiger (running panther) but I'm waiting out for Leopard to do all three machines 🙂
 
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