Is there any way to still buy leopard(at a reasonable price)

[chris7777]

I have a powermac G4 that has the bare minimum specs to run Leopard, and I need to upgrade it from jaguar to leopard for development use, problem is now that snow leopard is out, I cant seem to find a copy of leopard that they arent asking at least a hundred bucks for.

What is the deal did apple take back all the copys of leopard when they released snow leopard, and destroy them or something. I dont mind paying 30 bucks or so, to upgrade, but amazon, and most ebay auctions are listing it for well over a hundred bucks, and this is for a friend who is wanting to learn development to help out our own efforts.

Any one know where I can get a copy at a fair price, instead of some inflated almost speculatory pricing, or another alternative to upgrade this tower so he can dive in and get the basics?

It makes me sick if I had known that it would be this much trouble i would have bought a leopard disk back before they took them off the market.

 

[fullojellybeans]

Even if you could get a copy of 10.5 you would need to be running 10.3.9 or higher to upgrade that machine. If you wanted to install 10.5 you would have to do a clean erase and install just to run it. good luck.

 

[old-wiz]

I seem to remember a post somewhere that said you could call apple and still buy Leopard. I could well be wrong though.

 

[velocityg4]

It makes me sick if I had known that it would be this much trouble i would have bought a leopard disk back before they took them off the market.

They were $129 then as I recall. I imagine the price is so high because there are few copies available but a lot of G4 and G5 owners whom now need to upgrade since many new programs require Leopard as a minimum.

Since Leopard disappeared so quickly after Snow Leopard was released I imagine Apple got back unsold copies from retailers. Since eBay auctions regularly go for over a hundred I doubt you will get a better price. Just make sure to get a retail disc not a grey machine specific disk.