Tiger or Leopard? Is it worth the upgrade?

[prmccarron]

As you can see by my sig, I have a mac running Tiger. I have the option to upgrade to Leopard and get iLife '09 for free. Should I get it? I hear Leopard is so much better than Tiger, but I have only used Tiger, Panther, OS 8, and Snow Leopard.
Is it worth it ?

 

[RKO]

Going by the specs of your processor and amount of RAM I would recommend Tiger. You could install Leopard but your system is most likely going to run a bit slower.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Should I get it?

I think you should, just for Time Machine alone, as well as other improvements to Mail and the like. If you get iLife 09 bundled with it, that makes it even better value.

I'm still running Leopard, I've decided to give Snow Leopard a miss. I doubt there's nothing out there at the moment that has Snow Leopard as minimum system requirements.

You will need more RAM, though.

 

[Zedsdead185]

Yeah leopard would probably be worth the upgrade jut to bring it up to date a bit in software terms. Though i wouldn't think about it until you've upgraded your RAM from 256mb

 

[DannySmurf]

Yeah leopard would probably be worth the upgrade jut to bring it up to date a bit in software terms. Though i wouldn't think about it until you've upgraded your RAM from 256mb

Yeah. 1GB minimum. Though I've had issues with systems having only 1GB slowing down to an unusable speed while Time Machine was running. 1GB is going to be the maximum you can squeeze into that ancient system, so whether it's a good upgrade for you is very debatable.

 

[Detrius]

Yeah. 1GB minimum. Though I've had issues with systems having only 1GB slowing down to an unusable speed while Time Machine was running. 1GB is going to be the maximum you can squeeze into that ancient system, so whether it's a good upgrade for you is very debatable.

How do you know 1GB is the maximum? I have a dual 533MHz that maxes at 1.5GB. Regardless, whatever that old G4 DOES max at, that's how much RAM you should really be putting in it at this point. Even without an OS upgrade, your machine will be MUCH faster by increasing the RAM from 256MB to ANYTHING HIGHER. For many years, Apple shipped machines with *barely* enough RAM. 256MB is NOT enough. Graphics cards have more than this. That should be a giveaway that you don't have enough main memory.

 

[boston44]

Leopard is a huge upgrade, but SL is not necessary..

 

[prmccarron]

Going by the specs of your processor and amount of RAM I would recommend Tiger.

I'm getting a RAM upgrade to 512 MB. Biggest I can get, unfortunately.

 

[prmccarron]

Regardless, whatever that old G4 DOES max at, that's how much RAM you should really be putting in it at this point. Even without an OS upgrade, your machine will be MUCH faster by increasing the RAM from 256MB to ANYTHING HIGHER. For many years, Apple shipped machines with *barely* enough RAM. 256MB is NOT enough. Graphics cards have more than this. That should be a giveaway that you don't have enough main memory.

It maxes at 1 GB. But it only has 1 RAM slot, and the biggest RAM card I can get is 512 MB.

 

[Nermal]

Leopard is a huge upgrade, but SL is not necessary..

Not only unnecessary, but won't even run on that machine