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Leopard on an iBook G4 - Is it worth it?

Hi everybody

I have Leopard installed on a iBook G4 (last gen, 1.33ghz with maxed out ram at 1.5gb) and it's running fine for most of the time.

Let me post some observations:

Some things are faster than Tiger, like Safari and overall responsiveness of the OS.

However some things are slower than Tiger, Spotlight is really slow, not so much that it's unusable but it is very noticable. If you run a program (doesn't matter what) spotlight becomes very slow. I think it has something to do with either a slow harddrive (4200RPM) or the 1.33ghz cpu.

Another thing that is slower than Tiger is playing HD 480p trailers. You can't watch a 480p trailer without skipping, I tried quicktime and vlc both with the same results. So forget about hd 480p content.

Overall I must say that I am suprised that it even runs this good on an iBook, say what you want about minimum requirements but you really have to look at the recommended requirements. I can do all the things I am used to with Tiger with mostly the same speed, some things are faster and some things are slower. After 2 days of using it I'm very happy with Leopard, the only dissapointment is Spotlight, because I use it very much, so I have to get used to a slow responding Spotlight or buy a macbook ;)

Hope it helped somebody
 
Runs fine on my wife's iBook G4 (1.33Ghz G4 1.25GB Ram ATI Radeon 9200 AGP 32mb Vram)
she doesn't get some of the "visual effects" (but of course she didn't in Tger either) but in general things seem to run just fine.
 
manco said:
Hi everybody

I have Leopard installed on a iBook G4 (last gen, 1.33ghz with maxed out ram at 1.5gb) and it's running fine for most of the time.

Let me post some observations:

Some things are faster than Tiger, like Safari and overall responsiveness of the OS.

However some things are slower than Tiger, Spotlight is really slow, not so much that it's unusable but it is very noticable. If you run a program (doesn't matter what) spotlight becomes very slow. I think it has something to do with either a slow harddrive (4200RPM) or the 1.33ghz cpu.

Another thing that is slower than Tiger is playing HD 480p trailers. You can't watch a 480p trailer without skipping, I tried quicktime and vlc both with the same results. So forget about hd 480p content.

Overall I must say that I am suprised that it even runs this good on an iBook, say what you want about minimum requirements but you really have to look at the recommended requirements. I can do all the things I am used to with Tiger with mostly the same speed, some things are faster and some things are slower. After 2 days of using it I'm very happy with Leopard, the only dissapointment is Spotlight, because I use it very much, so I have to get used to a slow responding Spotlight or buy a macbook ;)

Hope it helped somebody
Click to expand...

I have pretty much the same ibook as you (1.33ghz, 1.25gb ram) spotlight is way faster than Tiger. Previously I'd have to wait 10 seconds or so for the list to populate, now it's super responsive... I did a clean install, did you do an upgrade?
 
Sky Blue said:
I have pretty much the same ibook as you (1.33ghz, 1.25gb ram) spotlight is way faster than Tiger. Previously I'd have to wait 10 seconds or so for the list to populate, now it's super responsive... I did a clean install, did you do an upgrade?
Click to expand...

Oh, thats interesting. I also did a clean install. The problem is that whenever I have a program running like Safari for example, Spotlight becomes very unresponsive, I have wait for each letter as I type them.

Have you tried searching with spotlight while you are browsing? preferably with a site that has flash in it.

Maybe there is something wrong with my Spotlight index, I'll have to re-index it. I would love to have Spotlight work as fast or faster than it was in Tiger.

ps. have you tried watching 480p HD trailers from the Apple trailer site?
 
Just installed on a G4 iBook, 1.33 Ghz & 1.25 GB ram. The installation went quicker than I thought it would (took about 50 minutes). Spotlight has finished indexing and this thing is flying so far; upgraded from Panther, and this is marginally faster (Panther was working quite well).:) For some reason I can't seem to connect to my network, but I'm sure I'll figure that out. Glad that I skipped Tiger right now, because now I get to enjoy the new features of Tiger and Leopard for the first time.:D
 
JoeCanadian said:
Thanks dborja. I have the exact same iBook; the last version of the iBook G4 1.33 GHz with 1.5 GB of memory. I look forward to hearing your experiences with Leopard.
Click to expand...

Just some quick impressions and tips:

Install went well (Archive and Install option). It took about an hour even though, initially, it said it was going to take two hours.

After the first Leopard login, let Spotlight finish indexing before shutting down or installing updates and new apps. It will feel sluggish while it's doing the initial indexing. Also, I ended up with an iDisk image on my desktop because I was too anxious and somehow interrupted the iDisk initialization.

MS Office 2004 works fine. Everything I've tried works. Of course, I can't do the stuff that the MacBooks can do (iSight, Front Row, etc).

It does feel faster than Tiger, in general.

I'm still fiddling around with my setups but, in all, I'm satisfied that the upgrade is worth it.

The Mosaic screen saver works fine, too. Try it - it's pretty cool!

Dale
 
Hi all.
I have a 12.1 inch iBook G4 1.07 GHz PPC with 1.25 GB RAM and an 80 GB HD. Does anyone have any Leopard experience yet with an iBook with the same or similar configuration?

Here's another question that is really important to me:
Has anyone upgraded their iBook that has 'iScroll 2' installed? I love having 2-finger scrolling on my iBook, and I don't think I could go back to not having it. I'm worried that iScroll 2 won't play nice with Leopard.
Thanks.
 
I've got an iBook G4 1.33Ghz with 1Gb of RAM, installed Leopard, and i think it's worth it!

I'm backing up using Time Machine as we speak and so far have not come across any major complications with existing software i use! iGetter works fine, MSN seems to look different with Leopard tho!

A few negatives i've observed so far:
- Spotlight is wayy slower than in Tiger for some reason and i hate it! It felt much snappier in Tiger!
- You know how Time Machine had this funky background with the stars hurling towards you and this yellow sun at the end twirling around in it's celestial grace? Yeah, it's not in mine. Theres no movement of stars nor the Sun. Just like a wallpaper really.. :(
- Coverflow isn't smooth but it's acceptable; i doubt ill be using much of it unless im browsing pictures.


The good stuff:
- You'll never imagine how useful Stacks are. It's Gods gift to Mac.
- Front Row & PhotoBooth all built in to Leopard! So no more finding hx0r builds of Photobooth & Front Row and attaching a webcam only to find the effects are screwed up! Still need to find a proper Front Row control tho, any suggestions? My phone's not compatible with Salling Clicker, otherwise would be really interested to see how this plays with the iBook.
 
lpshean said:
- Spotlight is wayy slower than in Tiger for some reason and i hate it! It felt much snappier in Tiger!
- Coverflow isn't smooth but it's acceptable; i doubt ill be using much of it unless im browsing pictures.
Click to expand...

Um, so two of the main features that are used to browse through your data are slow and choppy? That sucks a lot. I use spotlight all the time and I was planning on using Coverflow browsing for my docs/presentations/etc.

I still question if it is worth it for me with the specs that I have (see below)...
:confused:
 
I installed Leopard on 1.5 GHZ G4 Powerbook with 1.25 GB of memory today.

Overall, I'm not mad I did it. I did erase and install by the way cause it's not my main system.

It's nice having the Leopard and features on my Powerbook now too. It does seem a bit slower in some things.

However, the benefits of the much faster Safari are huge.

Overall, it is obviously harder on a system like this that is limited to so little memory (I have the most it can have), but overall it runs not too much worst than tiger, and the benefits I think outweigh the tiny slowdown.
 
Surely said:
Um, so two of the main features that are used to browse through your data are slow and choppy? That sucks a lot. I use spotlight all the time and I was planning on using Coverflow browsing for my docs/presentations/etc.

I still question if it is worth it for me with the specs that I have (see below)...
:confused:
Click to expand...


Well your HD might have a faster read speed than mine? But saying that, the graphics processor matters too (i think?) when it comes to showing cool animations like Coverflow.

But i don't use coverflow often at all so its all good. Just a bit dissapointed with Spotlight though that's all. And it's not pathetically slow mind, just when you start typing one or two letters, spotlight begins IMMEDIATELY. Whereas with Tiger what i found was that when your still typing, Spotlight only starts to search after youre about 2 seconds into your typing, if u get what i mean? And this immediate search in Leopard slows it down so say you want to search for "Holiday", after you start typing "Hol" spotlight starts immediately and it lags a little till you actually continue with the "-iday; whereas with Tiger, i think it's more like typing "Holid", then it searches!

But i may be wrong. It's just my stupid little way of observing!
 
what about powebook Ti...

gotta jump on the bandwagon here and ask... anyone try installing Leopard on a Powerbook Titanium w/ 1ghz G4?
 
ibook 1.33 with 1.5GB here. it's working fine with leopard. i'm not having the spotlight issues mentioned. and it's just as fast as tiger.
 
I installed it on my ancient PowerMac Single 450Mhz, and I am amazed by the performance increase. It must fly on those 'new' iBook G4's :D Running Leopard on my Mac it is so much better than Panther, images load soo much faster in Preview (launching, and flicking through multiple photos). I run about 10 apps at once on it, and the speed it pretty good for what I do (web development, a bit of graphics, browsing, emails, iWork, Flash, FireWorks, iTunes).

My idea of performance and increase in performance is obviously different from people who use more demanding apps, it's just amazing that such an old machine performs so well (even with cover flow) with the new operating system.

Note that I upgraded the graphics to a 64Mb Radeon 9000 PRO.
I'm only using 512MB Ram.
 
I own the last of the iBooks before they switched over to the Intel chips, the G4 processor really gets a workout from Leopard (sky rocketing to 100% especially when multi-tasking and using Spaces and even when booting up with no programs running the CPU graph starts between 23 to 35%. I can't seem to get Time Machine to work due to the fact it keeps crashing my system every attempt. The only other problem is that it does eat a lot of RAM and I have 1GB of RAM though if anyone can vouch that 1.5GB of RAM could help, do let me know.
 
TheReef said:
I installed it on my ancient PowerMac Single 450Mhz, and I am amazed by the performance increase. It must fly on those 'new' iBook G4's :D Running Leopard on my Mac it is so much better than Panther, images load soo much faster in Preview (launching, and flicking through multiple photos). I run about 10 apps at once on it, and the speed it pretty good for what I do (web development, a bit of graphics, browsing, emails, iWork, Flash, FireWorks, iTunes).

My idea of performance and increase in performance is obviously different from people who use more demanding apps, it's just amazing that such an old machine performs so well (even with cover flow) with the new operating system.

Note that I upgraded the graphics to a 64Mb Radeon 9000 PRO.
I'm only using 512MB Ram.
Click to expand...
Do you have to do anything special to get it to install on non-supported computers? I'm thinking of upgrading our aging laptops to 10.5, I've got a 1Ghz TiBook, and my wife has an 800Mhz iBook. I'm sure it will install fine on my TiBook, but will the installation software freak out if it detects a processor with a speed below the supported stats?
 
On the last set of iBooks... is it worth from 1GB of RAM to 1.5GB? or is there no difference?
 
mactastic said:
Do you have to do anything special to get it to install on non-supported computers? I'm thinking of upgrading our aging laptops to 10.5, I've got a 1Ghz TiBook, and my wife has an 800Mhz iBook. I'm sure it will install fine on my TiBook, but will the installation software freak out if it detects a processor with a speed below the supported stats?
Click to expand...

I installed it using target disk mode.


1) Connect your unsupported mac (your iBook) to a supported PPC Mac (your PowerBook) using a FireWire cable. (MUST be PPC, if it is intel, it will install the intel version on your PPC mac which will NOT work.)

2) Have your new Mac turned on, and start up the old Mac while holding "T" to put it in target disk mode.

3) On your new Mac, your old Mac's HD should appear as a FireWire drive on the desktop.

4) From your new Mac, install Leopard on this "external" drive.

And that's it!
 
aboutmac.jpg


Thats my iBook running Leopard. And its running smooth, except if you open iTunes, iPhoto and Firefox at the same time :p.
 
Just thought I'd post my experiences here. I upgraded my 1.2 GHz iBook G4 with 768 MB two days ago. I upgraded straight from Panther to Leopard. Everything works fine except that iCal LOST all my calendars. So make sure you back up before upgrading!

I agree with the poster who said spotlight is slow. But really, everything else works about the same. I haven't noticed much in the way of slowdowns. Also, unlike on my iMac Core Duo, Office v.X still works on this machine. Nice!

If you've been reluctant to upgrade an older machine, I'd say you should just go for it. The water's fine.
 
Almost any new OS is worth it to install as long as you computer has the minimum requirements...go for it!
 
Well, after looking at this thread, it looks like putting Leo on my friend's 1ghz iBook with 512 ram won't be too horrible.
 
Panther is killing me.. should I jump to Leopard?

Here's the specs on my iBook G4:

933 MHz PowerPC G4
640 MB DDR SDRAM

Or should I just go to Tiger? Is that Ram in this further upgradeable?
:confused:

I am currently running Panther. I cry when I turn on my system :(

Haha
 
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