iMac G4 700Mhz - Tiger Or Leopard?

D

drewdle

macrumors regular
Hey everyone. I know this concerns an older machine, but I was hoping to get some solid advice on this subject. I have retail copies of both Tiger and Leopard for my G4, and my OWC order just came in the mail, and after tearing it down, cleaning it up, and throwing a new 160Gb drive and 1Gb of memory into it, the machine is feeling extremely responsive under Tiger.

My question is thus: everyone seems to think Tiger's days are numbered, which I can understand when you consider it's age. But how numbered are numbered? Safari and iTunes are still supported up to the current versions, Camino is still supported on 10.4 so when Firefox drops Tiger support I'm not without a Gecko based browser, and the other software I plan to use on this machine (iLife 06, OpenOffice, JDarkRoom and some old games, primarily) are all still good for Tiger.

My primary concern stems from the web browser issue, but more importantly, internet security on this machine. It's on a wired connection behind an AirPort Extreme so I don't know how worried I need to be, but last I checked security updates are not coming down for Tiger anymore from Apple, thus would the iMac become a potential target running Tiger? I don't want to be running bare arsed to the wind, if you'll pardon the expression. So I was hoping someone with a better understanding of software security could explain differences between Tiger and Leopard and wether or not that's a huge deal.

I'm tempted to stick with Tiger, because now that the upgrades are in, it's lightning fast. Almost as fast as the MacBook fast, which is impressive from an eight year old machine. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
 
Honestly if someone targets a G4 running Tiger sitting behind various layers of NAT, you should be more impressed than worried :p

That being said I don't think there'd be that much of a performance hit upgrading to Leopard, however you'd have to think about which applications would no longer be compatible and whether or not it's worth it.
 
Tiger, every time. Sure it's days are numbered but the G4 is an antique too, it's also one of the best OS's Apple ever made and IMO more stable then Leopard. Also, you'll have to hack Leopard to run on a G4 700 (it's 867 Mhz minimum technically) and the hardware isn't really up to it so it'll chug, a lot.
 
I wish I still had Tiger. That might be the best OS that I ever used. Leopard's new features just don't appeal to me.

You have to admire the frugality of Tiger. If you had a PC, would you choose an XP or Vista? (I'm not suggesting that Leopard is on the same level of frustration as Vista).
 
kernkraft said:
You have to admire the frugality of Tiger. If you had a PC, would you choose an XP or Vista? (I'm not suggesting that Leopard is on the same level of frustration as Vista).
Click to expand...

Oh come on- that's way harsh! At least Leopard was a marginal step forward instead of a quantum leap backwards...
 
miles01110 said:
Oh come on- that's way harsh! At least Leopard was a marginal step forward instead of a quantum leap backwards...
Click to expand...

You are right, I wasn't suggesting anything like that. In fact, I think Leopard might be a big improvement for those who are interested in Time machine or Spaces. I'm just not that person as general stability, speed and simplicity matters more. I didn't have any real problems with Leopard, apart from the speed decrease. But I saw my brother's and colleagues' problems with Vista and I never wanted that OS. In fact, I still have a copy of XP somewhere that I have been planning to install under Parallels 5 for a while now. I haven't used Windows for such a long time and I actually miss Winamp and Total Commander - and a file system that I know. I hope that Windows 7 in that sense is similar to XP.
 
While Leopard isn't even in the same Ultraverse as Vista, I certainly understand the comparison in terms of simplicity. I'm installing Leopard at present because I have to restore my stuff using Time Machine but once I'm in there I'll see how it feels performance-wise and take it from there. Performance with 512Mb of memory and the stock hard drive under Leopard wasn't as pedestrian as you might imagine. As long as you keep the multitasking to a minimum (which I do; I've never gotten into the habit of leaving programs running without a task after all these years) it ran, but was noticeably poky, and video performance was poor. If I can get better video out of Tiger, I might go back to it.

Glad to know I don't have much to worry about security wise. I hadn't really considered the robustness of the Extreme's defences. I'll keep you posted. Thanks everyone.

(PS: Hey Miles, I loved the article about the people in the Apple Store. Priceless. )
(PPS: For those wondering, I got Leopard installed using LeopardAssist)
 
Just thought I'd let you guys know I settled on Leopard. Couple of reasons for this.

1) Despite the fact that I've got a brand new Caviar Blue installed, I like the idea of Time Machine keeping my butt safe because school work will be done on this machine.

2) For whatever reason, the newer Apple apps like Safari 4 and iTunes 9 feel more responsive under Leopard. Performance otherwise seems to be about the same. Leopard took longer to update thanks to the massive size of the 10.5.8 update and the installer took twice as long as the Tiger one, but now that everything is installed and up and running, things are going nicely.

Performance got a nice boost especially while multitasking, but I'm still sadly at a loss for a smooth framerate on YouTube. If I downgrade Flash to v8, I get almost-perfect playback, but not many sites allow 8 anymore. V9 and V10 are terribly slow, and the AGP2X can't hack HTML5 encoded MPEG video. Ah well. There's always the iPod, or the Mobile Youtube hack.

I'm sure I'll get a couple more years out of this thing. Thanks all for the feedback.
 
Drewdle i need the discs retail for imac g4

Please Help me my email is alfrana_2000@hotmail.com

drewdle said:
Hey everyone. I know this concerns an older machine, but I was hoping to get some solid advice on this subject. I have retail copies of both Tiger and Leopard for my G4, and my OWC order just came in the mail, and after tearing it down, cleaning it up, and throwing a new 160Gb drive and 1Gb of memory into it, the machine is feeling extremely responsive under Tiger.

My question is thus: everyone seems to think Tiger's days are numbered, which I can understand when you consider it's age. But how numbered are numbered? Safari and iTunes are still supported up to the current versions, Camino is still supported on 10.4 so when Firefox drops Tiger support I'm not without a Gecko based browser, and the other software I plan to use on this machine (iLife 06, OpenOffice, JDarkRoom and some old games, primarily) are all still good for Tiger.

My primary concern stems from the web browser issue, but more importantly, internet security on this machine. It's on a wired connection behind an AirPort Extreme so I don't know how worried I need to be, but last I checked security updates are not coming down for Tiger anymore from Apple, thus would the iMac become a potential target running Tiger? I don't want to be running bare arsed to the wind, if you'll pardon the expression. So I was hoping someone with a better understanding of software security could explain differences between Tiger and Leopard and wether or not that's a huge deal.

I'm tempted to stick with Tiger, because now that the upgrades are in, it's lightning fast. Almost as fast as the MacBook fast, which is impressive from an eight year old machine. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
 
Tiger getting PowerPC version black retail install DVD from eBay and such. If the iMac only has a CD drive big problems as CD version was extremely rare.

Also Leopard will run with a work around but will be too slow to enjoy.
 
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