Questions about Updating to 10.3

Forgive a newbie for asking silly questions, but I wanted to make sure I was comfortable before upgrading my system to OS X 10.3 Panther.

I currenly have a PowerMac G4 466mhz (yeah... it's old) running OS X 10.2.8. My computer has a history of giving me weird problems every few months, and doesn't always work properly. I really hate the damn thing sometimes, and would love to go out and buy a pretty, shiny new G5. But to save myself $2K I thought I would try to update the OS and hope that it stabilizes things a bit.

Here's my current situation. I was running OS 10.2.6 and things were usually fine. I had a problem with Safari acting up every now and then, but overall most things worked normally. For some reason, I decided to update to 10.2.8 and it all went to hell. The software update didn't install properly (it installed 99%... then just stopped) and so now applications won't open, or keep crashing.

This isn't the first time my system has had problems installing or upgrading software. My computer has been plagued with all sort of weird little issues. I'm no mac expert so I don't know how to troubleshoot very well.

I was hoping 10.3 might resolve the problems I've encountered. But I'm wondering what's the best way to install it? I see that there are several different options. I could just upgrade from my OS 10.2, or I could partition the old system, or I could erase everything.

I'm really tempted to just erase the damn thing and have a clean install of OS X. I'd love nothing more than to wipe the entire computer clean and start from scratch with a stable system. But will this happen? And what if I choose the "erase" option, but the installation screws up? Will my computer be useless?

Sorry for asking stupid questions!