Powerbook 12" 867mhz. 10.3 to 10.4 or 10.5?

My PB12" 867 runs Tiger very well, although you may find that applications start requiring 10.5 minimum soon so that could be the better choice. Do you know anyone with a 10.5 based PowerPC Mac that would let you boot off their disk in Target Disk mode? That would be the easiest way of gauging performance.

I'd go for 10.4. Most normal apps won't be 10.5-minimum for another couple of years. I'm using Tiger on my Macbook because there's no advantage to moving to Leopard right now.

I have that exact PowerBook with 640MB RAM and Tiger runs great, but if I were you, I would upgrade the RAM all the way and put Leopard on it, and it should run well (as long as you do a clean install). The only reason I'm still on Tiger is that I will be upgrading to a MacBook in a week or two, which will obviously come with Leopard pre-loaded.

Also, Time Machine would be really handy, especially with an (almost) 5 year old laptop that could die at any second without warning.

Don't do it

I wouldn't do it if I were you. See, my 1.33GHz iBook G4 with 1GB RAM doesn't run great under Leopard- it just runs OK. Considering your PowerBook is 65% as fast as my iBook with less RAM, I wouldn't advise you do it.

I put Leopard on my 12" PB 867 with 640mb RAM and it has some slowness to it. I would stick with Tiger. Take in consideration that 867mhz is the lowest you can go for sys requirements on apples site for Leopard.

iMpathetic said:

I wouldn't do it if I were you. See, my 1.33GHz iBook G4 with 1GB RAM doesn't run great under Leopard- it just runs OK. Considering your PowerBook is 65% as fast as my iBook with less RAM, I wouldn't advise you do it.

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My girlfriend has my old PB12 which is the exact specs as the OP. She was running Tiger previously, but she was having issues, so I did an upgrade (meant to do a fresh install) to Leopard just to see how it ran, and she says it's been running better. I haven't gotten a chance to sit down and play with it myself, but... I have installed leopard on it my gf (who is VERY picky about computer problems usually) said it ran fine.

wentwj said:

My girlfriend has my old PB12 which is the exact specs as the OP. She was running Tiger previously, but she was having issues, so I did an upgrade (meant to do a fresh install) to Leopard just to see how it ran, and she says it's been running better. I haven't gotten a chance to sit down and play with it myself, but... I have installed leopard on it my gf (who is VERY picky about computer problems usually) said it ran fine.

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Damn that iBook then.... It never liked Leopard anyway. Ya think I should try Leopard on my 867MHz TiBook with 768MB RAM?

Depends what you use it for. My 1ghz 12" Powerbook runs fine under Leopard, but I maxed out the ram to 1.25gb and turned OFF the 3D dock. Making the dock 2D makes the OS less choppy. Apple turned off transparent menu bar, but left the dock 3D which was a silly choice for older hardware - the 3D dock really pushes the graphics beyond comfortable performance limits.

I'd say Tiger was the sweet spot in terms of raw performance and responsiveness, but some things do work better in Leopard, such as dashboard and the finder.

My PowerBook with it's lowly G4 is used for only or Web, Office type tasks. All the heavy lifting is done on my Alu iMac, so you if don't have another Mac for that stuff then Tiger might be better for you than Leopard.

As a suggestion, before you commit to either OS, why not try installing to an external FireWire drive?

I used to think that it was necessary to have loads of ram, but for a while I was running tiger off 256 mb of ram and i didn't really feel the difference. As noted above, it really depends what you're doing.

For word processing/safari I think you'll be fine.

CalMin said:

Apple turned off transparent menu bar, but left the dock 3D which was a silly choice for older hardware - the 3D dock really pushes the graphics beyond comfortable performance limits.

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10.5.2 has the answer!

I have the same PB 12" 867 with 640MB setup and for a while I was really iffy about upgrading to Leopard because of the whole question of speed and performance. I finally did it and I was actually pleasantly surprised! It runs ALOT smoother than I would've ever expected. The only thing that gets me is the fact that it has a 40GB HD and Leopard takes alot of room, so I find myself having to constantly get rid of things.

I am running Leopard on my 867 with 1.12GB RAM. It is definitely slower than my MBP but it really isn't bad considering. It runs all the programs at a reasonable speed and doesn't seem to hang up. I also upgraded my hard drive to a 5400rpm 60GB model, so that probably helps a tiny bit.

Tom B. said:

10.5.2 has the answer!

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That's awesome. To not have to that via the command line will be a lot more convenient. Don't know why it wasn't part of 10.5.0. It really makes a difference on old hardware.

I installed Leopard on a 1Gh powerbook 12" with 512mb ram and it runs really well. The trick is that I upgraded the HD to a 7200rpm drive when the original died. All of those old Powerbooks came with 4200rpm drives. That is the main cause of slowdown. With only 512mb of RAM, I don't even get that many beachballs.

Get Tiger.