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Leopard on 512mb ram?

Eric Lewis

Eric Lewis

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 4, 2007
2,380
1
CANADA? eh?
I have a 1.33ghz 12" Powerbook with 512mb ram

How would leopard perform? (i dont want to spend any more money on ram...i have a family pack of leopard with 2 installs left)

Thanks
 
Hi,

well, Apple's Tech Specs say it's possible with 512 MB RAM.

Do you have an external hard drive around? You could use SuperDuper! to clone your internal hard disk to an external partition.
After that install Leopard on the internal and see how it performs.

If the performance is not sufficient you can clone your hard disk image back onto the internal from the external hard disk.


Hope this is useful.
/Rupert
 
mackindergarten said:
Hi,

well, Apple's Tech Specs say it's possible with 512 MB RAM.

Do you have an external hard drive around? You could use SuperDuper! to clone your internal hard disk to an external partition.
After that install Leopard on the internal and see how it performs.

If the performance is not sufficient you can clone your hard disk image back onto the internal from the external hard disk.


Hope this is useful.
/Rupert
Click to expand...

yes a have an extra empty 80gb drive (external)

and my powerbook is a 60gb?

how do i clone my disk back? from the external?
 
To clone the image from the external back onto the internal, start up using the CD, then you have a Finder like interface and some utilities at hand. Including Disk Utility.

In Disk Utility, click on your hard disk, and go to the Restore tab. Drag and drop hard disks from the list on the left onto Source and Destination. Be careful, which is which!

If the drive is a Firewire drive you could also install Leopard directly on that drive (this is what I did).

/Rupert
 
if you don't want to upgrade memory, don't use leopard. 512 is Minimum for leopard, it won't be anything close to smooth, slightly larger apps are probably out of consideration as well.

Heck, 512MB can't even do Office well with Tiger.
 
Recipe for disaster. Go big or go home. Tiger is lame at 512mb, and its minimum reqs are 256mb. Leopard is like Vista; you need at least 2gb to get multiple things done without hangups.
 
tiger is unpleasent with 512mbs so I cant imagine leopard being very fun with that much, even XP is laggy with 512mbs
 
Eric - - Rupert's suggestion sounds like the thing to do. Since you have the external HD there is little or no risk. All it costs is a little bit of your time - - and then you will know the answer, unlike many other Mac users. Knowledge trumps opinion every time.

Good luck, have fun, and post your results.
 
Could I make a 10gb partion on my drive? and install leopard on there

and then see how it goes? instead of backing it up externally first?
 
Eric Lewis said:
Could I make a 10gb partion on my drive? and install leopard on there

and then see how it goes? instead of backing it up externally first?
Click to expand...

Here's what you do:

1. Create a partition on your external drive.

2. Reboot with external plugged in.

3. Install Leopard to external.

4. Copy stuff over w/Migration Assistant.

5. Reboot from external drive w/Leopard.

6. Decide if performance is adequate.

7. If yes, use CCC to clone your external to your internal.
 
sure - - you could, but i don't know if 10GB is enough. try it and see. if it isn't, then make it bigger. you'll increase your knowledge.

i would still do the backup though. much better to have it and not need it - than to need it and not have it
 
I backed up the whole machine


and tried the upgrade feature

and so far it worked great

at first it was really slow until indexing finished

then i installed 10.5.2 and the graphics update

turned the dock to 2D

and its actually working great

i only use this machine for office + iwork + itunes + iphoto + firefox

(not all at the same time)
 
Congrats that you tried and succeeded. :)

Another reason why Apple is better than MS: their OS updates don't automatically require you to run out and upgrade all you hardware. A lot of people WANT to buy new hardware, because it's sleek. The big story is: you don't have to. And that's a good thing.
 
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