Installing Tiger over Panther

[Natalia81]

I have a power book (non-intel). It has 10.3.9. Should I do a complete install or an upgrade when putting 10.4.x on it? I'm from the Windows world and I know there it is better to just do a new install of Windows instead of an upgrade. Just wondering if it's the same with Macs.

 

[dartzorichalcos]

I have a power book (non-intel). It has 10.3.9. Should I do a complete install or an upgrade when putting 10.4.x on it? I'm from the Windows world and I know there it is better to just do a new install of Windows instead of an upgrade. Just wondering if it's the same with Macs.

Assuming you have everything backed-up, I would do a reinstall and instead of upgrading to Tiger, upgrade to Leopard when it comes out. 😉

 

[WildCowboy]

Some people recommend doing a clean installation of a new OS, but part of the reasoning is that it's a good opportunity to spruce things up and get rid of some of the junk that's piled up over the years. Yes, some people recommend it just to insure that you've got the most solid system possible to run on, but I'm not a big proponent of it. I generally just do upgrade installs and have never had a problem.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

With Mac OS X you actually have 3 options when installing - Upgrade, Archive and Install, and Erase and Install. Upgrade is the simplest but also the most prone to problems (usually caused by incompatible applications). Archive and Install is reasonably safe, and is a good option if you're concerned about post-install trouble. Your choice whether to enable "Preserve users and network settings" - this is very convenient for keeping your existing data but can occasionally lead to problems. An Erase and Install will wipe your hard disk clean before installing. This is the safest option, but also the hardest to get up and running afterwards, since you'll have to manually copy all the data you want to keep from your backup.

For things like the situation you describe I always do an Erase and Install, just because I'm paranoid 😱

 

[roger6106]

An archive and install should be just as safe as an erase and install.

 

[IJ Reilly]

A straight upgrade is the safest, least disruptive method of all.

I don't buy the argument that a clean or archive install goes anywhere useful in terms of troubleshooting incompatible applications. If by chance you've got an application installed that doesn't work with the new OS, you're going to discover the incompatibility when you reinstall it anyway, and you would not know about it until you did reinstall it. Nothing is gained, as nearly as I can tell. Incompatible applications aren't a big deal anyway. They should not be able to crash the OS. If an application doesn't work in Tiger, it might need to be upgraded, is all. You can even do that homework before you upgrade OSX.

 

[Multimedia]

I Like Archive & Install Best

An archive and install should be just as safe as an erase and install.

I also vote for Archive and Install thus retaining all your Panther settings for Mail etc.

 

[sfisher]

I have a power book (non-intel). It has 10.3.9. Should I do a complete install or an upgrade when putting 10.4.x on it? I'm from the Windows world and I know there it is better to just do a new install of Windows instead of an upgrade. Just wondering if it's the same with Macs.

It isn't the same as with Windows 🙂. I did a normal upgrade from 10.3 to 10.4 quite a while back without any problems at all on my iBook.