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Upgrading from Jaguar to Leopard

C

cdeburg7

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 10, 2008
10
0
Hello all, I'm relatively new to this blog. I have a Powerbook G4 867 Mhz, 512 Mb using Jaguar. I'm interested in updating my laptop for obvious reasons. I borrowed my coworkers Leopard OS X disk from her new laptop and tried installing it on my computer. It said "Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer".
After some research I've learned that each OS X disc is made for each individual computer. So will it be possible for me to update to Tiger or Leopard using someone else's disc?? If so, can I do it without having to pay for any discs that are compatable with my computer?
I'm not sure what to do? I'm really interested in having an updated OS, since my current 10.2.8 doesn't allow me to visit youtube.com, CNN is displayed really weird, and Wikipedia looks funky. Any advice will help! :confused:
Cory
 
If you are asking for help in pirating software, tough luck. This is against the "blog" rules.

You can of course just walk down to your local apple store and buy a retail version of Leopard and install it. God forbid.

Edit: have you considered buying a copy of Panther/Tiger from eBay? upping your RAM?
 
iShater said:
If you are asking for help in pirating software, tough luck. This is against the "blog" rules.

You can of course just walk down to your local apple store and buy a retail version of Leopard and install it. God forbid.

Edit: have you considered buying a copy of Panther/Tiger from eBay? upping your RAM?
Click to expand...
OH dang I didn't know it was considered pirating- like I said I don't know much about this blog, or about computers in general.

The reason why I don't want to spend much money is I just paid a $67,000 medical school tuition bill-- so I hope you can understand.

So I could buy a copy of an OS on Ebay? How would I know what "type" of disk to buy? Could I get a Leopard or Tiger one?
 
Download Firefox, that will sort out the web page issues your having.

As for the other stuff, yeah sorry we can't help there, tis illegal.
 
Does your school offer you discounts on software? you might be able to get the Leopard retail package from their computer store cheaper than the $129 you would pay.

Look for OSX Tiger Retail box on ebay.
 
If you're going to buy Leopard and use it on your PowerBook 867 MHz machine. Then you must upgrade your RAM too, cause 512 Mb is the absolute bare minimum.

I say upgrade to Tiger (10.4). Forget about Leopard unless you get a new computer altogether.
 
GimmeSlack12 said:
If you're going to buy Leopard and use it on your PowerBook 867 MHz machine. Then you must upgrade your RAM too, cause 512 Mb is the absolute bare minimum.

I say upgrade to Tiger (10.4). Forget about Leopard unless you get a new computer altogether.
Click to expand...

Yeah, 867 Mhz is also the bare minimum.

Time for a new computer, or as GimmeSlack said, just go Tiger, but you don't have the install CD's for that either.

New MacBook time methinks.
 
This is a user forum, not a blog ;)

You have a Rev A 12" G4 Powerbook there. I run Leopard on a Rev B (1gz) 12" Powerbook. And it has a little more ram at 768mb (built in 256mb + 512mb chip).

To be honest, although its quite useable, performance is rather marginal. So it's only going to be worse on your slightly older Powerbook.

I would recommend a ram upgrade (Only 1 ram slot, so get a 1gb chip) and only upgrading the OS to 10.4 instead of 10.5
Should make for a perfectly good little Mac for internet use.
 
Luap said:
This is a user forum, not a blog ;)

You have a Rev A 12" G4 Powerbook there. I run Leopard on a Rev B (1gz) 12" Powerbook. And it has a little more ram at 768mb (built in 256mb + 512mb chip).

To be honest, although its quite useable, performance is rather marginal. So it's only going to be worse on your slightly older Powerbook.

I would recommend a ram upgrade (Only 1 ram slot, so get a 1gb chip) and only upgrading the OS to 10.4 instead of 10.5
Should make for a perfectly good little Mac for internet use.
Click to expand...


Wow thank you for all the suggestions- I'm sold on the Tiger update.. My naive/ignorant question now is-- How/where can I get it for cheap? Like I said before, I just paid a $67,000 med school tuition bill so I'm looking for something cheap.

Can I just ask a friend for it (I know that sounds like piracy but I have heard a lot of ppl say Apple suggests people "ask a friend" for Tiger, specifically). Or should I get it on Ebay?
 
Luap said:
This is a user forum, not a blog ;)

You have a Rev A 12" G4 Powerbook there. I run Leopard on a Rev B (1gz) 12" Powerbook. And it has a little more ram at 768mb (built in 256mb + 512mb chip).

To be honest, although its quite useable, performance is rather marginal. So it's only going to be worse on your slightly older Powerbook.

I would recommend a ram upgrade (Only 1 ram slot, so get a 1gb chip) and only upgrading the OS to 10.4 instead of 10.5
Should make for a perfectly good little Mac for internet use.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I was thinking the same thing, staying with Tiger with my 12" (latest rev).
 
I don't know where I got 12" from?! Maybe a lucky guess, anyway thats almost irrelevant.

As for where to get 10.4/Tiger from. Maybe place a wanted add in some classifieds section? Must be a few people that have a spare retail install disc they no longer need after upgrading to Leopard, so would sell it cheap. Failing that, then yes, eBay perhaps.

There are other ways to get it of course ;) But none of which are legit, so naturally can't be discussed here on a public forum. But seeing as you should be able to get Tiger cheap, theres no real need to source an illegal version anyway.
 
cdeburg7 said:
OH dang I didn't know it was considered pirating- like I said I don't know much about this blog, or about computers in general.

The reason why I don't want to spend much money is I just paid a $67,000 medical school tuition bill-- so I hope you can understand.

So I could buy a copy of an OS on Ebay? How would I know what "type" of disk to buy? Could I get a Leopard or Tiger one?
Click to expand...

You may not have a choice in the matter unfortunately. Tiger and Leopard both have their limitations. I'm pretty sure you absolutely have to have a firewire port for Leopard. You might be able to install Tiger, but even then Tiger is going to be outdated with Snow Leopard coming out. I can understand the amount of money going out is hard, $67,000 for med school, jesus (just curious, are you going out of state?), especially in this market, but you may not have a choice.

Rumor has it the macbooks are going down in price, just as an FYI. In case.
 
iShater said:
Thanks for the info. I was thinking the same thing, staying with Tiger with my 12" (latest rev).
Click to expand...

Yours would be 1.5ghz, a significant 50% faster than my slightly marginal 12" powerbook at 1ghz. So if the ram is maxed (1.5gb?) then 10.5/Leopard would be absolutely fine on yours. Where as it only just about scrapes by on mine..
 
I have the same machine and...

I have almost the exact same machine...except I upgraded mine to the maximum ram apple claims it can use, 640 megs of RAM. (I know, some say it can handle more but I'm an idiot ok?)

Seriously, though, running leopard on it is going to be tough at best. You'd have to find a way to disable a lot of the features that make it useful (if you even can) and the machine is aging anyway. Mine still runs Tiger just fine, it's been a tough little Mac I've taken around the country and subjected to abuse and it still run OK...but it is way way way slow compared to the newer machines, and it can't do a lot of the things I need a Mac to do - no USB 2.0 means no new iPods, means no new drive casings that do not have Fire Wire, and so on.

I now keep it as a backup machine to take out to cafes and such, but bought a Macbook when they upgraded the processors earlier this year and it's great. Much much faster, I bumped up the RAM to 4 gigs, and overall a great deal. I'm sure the new ones next week will be even better!
 
i may be naive to your situation, but chances are you took out some loans for your tuition. Go ahead and throw some of that loan money towards a new computer, whats another a grand when you just spent 67
 
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