Should I upgrade to Leopard?

[86047]

I am running a 1.33Ghz iBook G4 with 1GB of Ram, so my laptop is definitely up to the requirements.

I have a few concerns about upgrading, though.
- Apple says that Leopard requires 9.x GB of space. Is this on top of the space that Tiger takes up? I only have 10GB free on my 60GB hard drive. Of course, I don't have a need for any of the localization files and stuff.

- I really want a macbook, but A. I don't see it happening anytime in the near future and b. I don't really NEED it, since I'm not really doing anything that taxing right now. I'm basically doing student work and word processing. I did photography for a while that could have used a macbook, and I love it, but I decided that I would wait a couple of years since I have too much to do and spend money on right now to do/fund an expensive hobby like photography.
So I don't really need a new laptop, but if I ended up getting Leopard for my ibook, and then getting a macbook for say, Christmas or something, that would kind of suck since I just spent 129 bucks I didn't have to (or whatever it is with EDU pricing...)

The reason I want to upgrade is not really because of features, although the new UI and Finder etc. look extremely nice. What I'm most concerned about is losing support of my favorite freeware, etc. Do you know when developers start to require the next incremental release of OS X, because I am finding freeware day after day that I use.


So, is it worth it to upgrade to leopard, or would my money be better spent on something different, like a backup HD, as I'm always paranoid that one day my data is going to get flushed down the drain and I'm not serious enough about backing up. Leopard would be nice, but should I be worried about upgrading just yet?

 

[CalBoy]

I think that you should wait until you iBook dies. If you're only doing things that would only have moderate benefits from Leopard, your $69 can be set aside so that in a few more months (or even a year) when your iBook does die on you, you'll have a fund ready to buy a new macbook.

 

[QuarterSwede]

You'll definitely benefit from Spaces on your iBook, I know I have on my 12" PB.

Leopard definitely takes up more space and I don't really recommend the Upgrade as Leopard was buggy for me after I did that. I've since done an Erase & Install and Leopard runs beautifully without a hitch (easily as fast as Tiger). The networking in Leopard is finally what one would expect from the 21st century (meaning it's super fast and lag free).

If you don't have a backup I'd recommend getting one, not only because Time Machine is brilliantly easy, but because you'll be able to backup your drive then do an erase & install and use the setup assistant to migrate all your files, settings, iTunes & iPhoto ratings, etc. It's quite perfect really.

I think that you should wait until you iBook dies. If you're only doing things that would only have moderate benefits from Leopard, your $69 can be set aside so that in a few more months (or even a year) when your iBook does die on you, you'll have a fund ready to buy a new macbook.

This is a good point if you're looking to buy a MacBook (great machine) in the coming months.

 

[86047]

You'll definitely benefit from Spaces on your iBook, I know I have on my 12" PB.

Leopard definitely takes up more space and I don't really recommend the Upgrade as Leopard was buggy for me after I did that. I've since done an Erase & Install and Leopard runs beautifully without a hitch (easily as fast as Tiger). The networking in Leopard is finally what one would expect from the 21st century (meaning it's super fast and lag free).

If you don't have a backup I'd recommend getting one, not only because Time Machine is brilliantly easy, but because you'll be able to backup your drive then do an erase & install and use the setup assistant to migrate all your files, settings, iTunes & iPhoto ratings, etc. It's quite perfect really.


This is a good point if you're looking to buy a MacBook (great machine) in the coming months.

i was thinking more of a hard drive to match the one in my ibook, and doing clone. I definitely don't have enough money for a larger drive (i guess I could settle for 5400 instead of 7200rpm though), AND leopard. That would be perfect though.
I would just backup stuff to DVD, but I don't have a superdrive, and for the price of an external drive, I'm already halfway towards a hard drive, and it's only 40 bucks for a good FW enclosure and stuff.

I guess I should go backup, then leopard.

Oh and I'm not planning on letting my ibook die any time soon, unless the Logic Board fries or something, but how common is that? I'm in high school so I guess it would be more realistic to expect a macbook by the time I'm ready to go to college than in teh near future. The ibook still has a good year or two of applecare on it, so I'm covered almost until then I guess (I'm a sophmore).

 

[sananda]

I am running a 1.33Ghz iBook G4 with 1GB of Ram, so my laptop is definitely up to the requirements.

I have a few concerns about upgrading, though.
- Apple says that Leopard requires 9.x GB of space. Is this on top of the space that Tiger takes up? I only have 10GB free on my 60GB hard drive. Of course, I don't have a need for any of the localization files and stuff.

hi. i have just put leopard on my 1.33 ibook with 1.5GB RAM. before i did this i had 14.73 GB free. i erased and installed but didn't put the languages and printer drivers on. i put back just about everything i had erased and i now have 19.7 GB free.

 

[JNB]

If you don't have a backup, that's the FIRST thing you need. An external drive and SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, and you'll breathe a lot easier.

Speed is irrelevant for backup, quite honestly. All you're doing is writing one big chunk then incrementally after that, so drive speed (which is mostly a nonissue for most uses, anyway) is money better spent on capacity--that you could use to install Leopard on for a dual-boot sandbox!

 

[86047]

If you don't have a backup, that's the FIRST thing you need. An external drive and SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, and you'll breathe a lot easier.

Speed is irrelevant for backup, quite honestly. All you're doing is writing one big chunk then incrementally after that, so drive speed (which is mostly a nonissue for most uses, anyway) is money better spent on capacity--that you could use to install Leopard on for a dual-boot sandbox!

I figured on a FW or USB/FW enclosure from Other World Computing (probably the latter in case I want to transfer files to/from the family windows box that doesn't have firewire), and a barracuda, probably a 320, or maybe the next one down. Or I could buy a 160GB and Leopard, and that would probably work. But I figure Time Machine probably wants a large amount of disk space, but my internals only 60. So you don't think 7200RPM would be worth it?

The thing is, I wanted a bootable clone to boot from if my hard drive dies, since I might not be able to get a new one immediately, and I need to do my school work daily. Time Machine won't let me do that (right?), so I don't know what I'm going to do (I'll be using CCC or SuperDuper! until I can get Leopard). Would Time machine be a better option than a bootable backup (pros/cons?). Leopard's resizable partitions seem nice. That way I could use one drive for time machine, and the other for files that won't fit on my relatively small 60GB internal drive. Would time machine backup two volumes at once, or would I have to back that stuff up separately?

Thanks in advance for your time