Leopard versions

[AppleLight]

Hi,

i recently bought a mac off of eBay, 1.83Ghz 2GB RAM 60GB Hard Drive.

It came with Tiger pre-installed, but after seeing some of the features of leopard I have decided to upgrade. I was looking at some of the deals online and came across some sites selling for £35. But they have something about education licenses and 100-999 licenses and I'm confused. Are they all the same? If I get the education one will it have any separate features?

 

[mkrishnan]

The short answer is that Leopard, unlike Vista, only really comes in one format. There are some differences, though.

There are...

- System restore discs -- these are grey discs that came packaged with a computer. These can ONLY be used to restore the OS on that model / generation of Mac. They CANNOT be used to install OS X on any other Mac (it's not only a violation of the license but also it will just refuse to install).

- Black retail discs -- these came in a Leopard retail box and they can be used to install Leopard on any Mac

- There is also a Leopard Server variant that has additional server tools, but hardly any consumers use it -- it's mostly important for large managed settings.

As far as the educational license, the discs are completely identical, but you cannot use them legally unless you're actually an eligible member of such an educational institution (student, teacher, faculty, staff, etc).

 

[AppleLight]

So, I'm a student. Some of the computers in my college are macs, does this mean legally i could purchase an educational CD get all the updates and everything like normal?

Even though most of the time I'd be using my MacBook at home..?

 

[mkrishnan]

Even though most of the time I'd be using my MacBook at home..?

There are two different kinds of educational discounts -- sorry... actually, well, there are three. Note that the software itself is the same in all cases. It's a matter of getting a valid license.

- There is a "institutional" discount. This means that Apple discounts the price for Leopard to the University. You are NOT eligible for this.

- If you qualify for student purchasing at the student discount / HE discount rate for your country, this goes through the Apple store either online or in person. This is explicitly intended for your use on your home computer, so yes, you can do exactly that with it.

- Finally, you may have an extended site license program at your school. You should check the IT department's website for this. What this means is that sometimes Apple (used to be more often; Microsoft does this a lot) lets people affiliated with an institution extend the institution's license for their home computer. IF you qualify for this (have to look at the specific policy), you can use this at home, although generally this license only remains valid while you're affiliated with the institution. If this exists, the price is usually dramatically lower than the others (in the US it would generally be $15 or less).

 

[AppleLight]

Oooohhh skeen.

Thanks