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hellothere231

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 13, 2012
135
19
Recently, I've been thinking of replacing Leopard with Tiger on my 1.5ghz Powerbook. Leopard's nice and all, but it is a bit sluggish on this computer sometimes, even with an SSD and 2 gigs of RAM. Would Tiger speed it up quite a bit? The only issue I have with switching is that some of my apps won't work on the older operating system (like Leopard-WebKit). Is it worth it to switch?
 
I really enjoy Tiger on my eMac and PowerBook G4. At least for me, Leopard offers better compatibility with a number of apps, but little else in the way of improvements. The speed, look and feel of Tiger makes it the perfect OS in my opinion. :)
 
I've already used all of those tweaks, however. The only thing I haven't done is overclocked the GPU; and I don't think that will help much with day to day use of the computer (except for gaming).
You might benefit then from an archive and install.

@Dronecatcher had some slowness issues with Leopard. Reinstalling solved his problems.
 
Reinstallation work wonders on Tiger and Leopard - I don't know why but sometimes an OS just doesn't sit right and the only cure is to start again.
I'd steer clear of Geekbench as an indicator of performance too - the results are so wild and variable, you'll have yourself convinced you have an underperforming Mac in no time (or conversely, a turbo charged one) - I've just seen my 12" 1.5 Powerbook go from 899 in Tiger to 584 in Leopard - a ludicrous difference, which real world performance bears out as being false.
 
You might benefit then from an archive and install.

@Dronecatcher had some slowness issues with Leopard. Reinstalling solved his problems.
Reinstallation work wonders on Tiger and Leopard - I don't know why but sometimes an OS just doesn't sit right and the only cure is to start again.
I'd steer clear of Geekbench as an indicator of performance too - the results are so wild and variable, you'll have yourself convinced you have an underperforming Mac in no time (or conversely, a turbo charged one) - I've just seen my 12" 1.5 Powerbook go from 899 in Tiger to 584 in Leopard - a ludicrous difference, which real world performance bears out as being false.
Alright, then. I'll go back up my data and reinstall Leopard. Thanks for the advice!
 
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I run Leopard on any Mac that can (and a few that shouldn't) and of all of them with a single CPU, the 1.5 PowerBook is probably the fastest feeling. I would never go back to Tiger.
 
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Tiger for G4s, Leopard for G5s. That's how the song went back in the day. Leopard has a number of services like Time Machine ticking in the background that might give the impression that Finder et al are a bit less snappy. You can turn most of those off.

It all depends how much compatibility you need with what you intend to run. If I don't need Leopard, I stick with Tiger.
 
I install Leopard on my PowerBooks as I have found they work just fine. However, on my iBooks I have left them on Tiger. Everyone has a preference but I find that those OS work best on those machines.
 
I would keep Leopard - maybe reinstall. - I fiddled around with Leopard and Tiger (mainly for the 'Classic' reason) on my 12" PowerBook G4 1.5GHz with mSATA an 3 partitions (Leopard/Tiger/Data). And I also run Leopard on two 12" iBook-G4 1,2GHz (one with SSD-Upgrade, the other with DiskDrive).
Leopard in much more convenient in many ways even if working with Tiger is somehow amazing, especially when it comes to "Classic". Concerning systems with low specs it's much faster and responsive (e.g. iBookG4 800GHz).
With a PB 1.5GHz and 2GB of RAM Leopard should do a good job. - I you're going to reinstall the system, why not separating the disk to 3 partitions too (Leopard/Tiger/Data) to check, if Tiger would do a better job.Tiger would only take 10GB for the system partition - user data could stay on the data partition available for both Leopard and Tiger.
Have fun.
 
Fix your permissions, maybe even manually prebind? Use an old iDefrag and hot defragment it if those don't work.

If all else fails, do the archive and install.
 
Alright, I've finished reinstalling Leopard on my Powerbook G4, and transferred all my backed up applications back from my main computer. Before installing Leopard, I actually tried Tiger, but it was just slower than Leopard, especially on the internet (also, apps were outdated). It is noticeably faster. Thanks for the help, guys! :)
 
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Fix your permissions, maybe even manually prebind? Use an old iDefrag and hot defragment it if those don't work.

If all else fails, do the archive and install.

Most things all miracles for me:
(- fix permissions =ok)
- old "iDefrag"?
- "hot defragment"?
Please do not let me die as a stupid man.
Cheers
Robert
 
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