Best OS X for this iMac...

[Niki.King]

Hi, my friend has just recently acquired a G4 iMac. Im just wondering what the best OS X software is that the system can run? I have included a screenshot incase it is any help.

Spec:
700 MHz
256 SDRAM

Cheers Guys!

 

[maflynn]

Yikes, I'm not sure which would be the best given the meager ram amounts. Probably 10.2 as you have already installed. I think 10.4 is the leanest and quickest OSX but I'm not sure the memory requirements of 10.4 fit within what you have installed, that is you have too little ram.

 

[mabaker]

As long as you don't run more than 1-2 apps at a time Tiger will run just fine.

 

[durija]

10.4 Tiger works great on an old G4 we have at work. You'll probably want more RAM. At least 512 MB, but 1GB would be nice.

 

[TheBritishBloke]

You can't run Leopard 10.5, as it requires at least a 1Ghz Processor (I heard there was a hack for this, but I wouldn't recommend it). You could upgrade the RAM to 1GB, and run Tiger 10.4 which is my best guess, so long as you aren't gonna be running too many apps.

 

[txhockey9404]

My school still has a few G4 iMacs sitting around. They run fine on 10.4.11, but have 512MB of RAM. They are noticeably slower than the 2.4GHZ original Alu iMacs obviously, but serve their purpose for light internet browsing and word processing. I think 10.3 would be perfectly fine, but 10.4 would be better ONLY IF you can get 512MB of RAM.

 

[Eric S.]

I ran 10.4 on my PowerMac G4 with 320MB RAM for years and it was fine.