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olly666

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 27, 2008
201
0
Seattle, WA
I'm trying to fix up an old ibook (g4) for a friend and would like to put Leopard on it but it doesn't meet the RAM requirements (only has 256MB). Is there a way to force the upgrade? Thanks.
 
I'm trying to fix up an old ibook (g4) for a friend and would like to put Leopard on it but it doesn't meet the RAM requirements (only has 256MB). Is there a way to force the upgrade? Thanks.

There is always a way but Leopard on 256MB RAM would be brutally painful. Trust me. It is even slow with 1GB.

In my experience using Leo on many different Macs you need 2GB before it's truly smooth enough for a good user experience.
 
There is always a way but Leopard on 256MB RAM would be brutally painful. Trust me. It is even slow with 1GB.

In my experience using Leo on many different Macs you need 2GB before it's truly smooth enough for a good user experience.

Yep, absolutley agree, IMO to run Leopard without it causing suicidal thoughts I would reccomend at very least 768mb Ram. With 256mb it'll be driving you up the wall with frustration. I would upgrade your Ram to 1gb, you can do this for as little as £30 ($65)
 
Thanks for the replies. I guess I'll just leave it with Tiger and use older versions of the software she wants.
 
I upgraded my PowerMac G4 Cube w/ a 1.2Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM and it runs faster than Tiger ever did I'd say (looking to sell btw). And I upgraded my Moms PowerBook G4 1.67Ghz w/ 1GB of RAM to Leopard and runs very satisfyingly well.

But yeah, I probably wouldn't even bother below 1GB of RAM, well, I'd probably try, would may or may not use it depending on how well it really did perform.
 
Having booted and used 10.5.6 on 128MB, I would say it was more than slow, in fact Ive seen glaciers that moved faster than it. (This was on a 700Mhz G4 eMac and installed by target disk mode to see if it would boot - It does, but if you open any application, at all, or even move the mouse, it lags) - However give it 1GB RAM and it runs beautifully (I have it on my 450Mhz G4 with 1GB RAM, and with the graphical things turned off, it runs perfectly), and its an upgrade thats easily worth it for $40 or less.
 
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