Upgrading from Panther to Leopard/Snow Leopard?

[forcefieldkid]

Hi guys,
My G5 has been running on Panther (10.3.9) since I first bought it (feels like forever ago) a few years back, and since I'm picking up a Macbook to go with it, that will ship with Leopard, I'm looking into getting both Macs running on the same OS.

Knowing that I won't be able to use the Macbooks Leopard install disc on the G5, I've been looking at decent used prices for a retail version on ebay/amazon etc.

Now, this is the first time I've ever looked to upgrade the OS and it will probably show in what I've learned, if its as naive as I'm guessing it might be...

I've come across something called OSX Snow Leopard Single User Retail Pack, which retails at about a third of the price of the Leopard Packs.. often even alot less. Now I know/believe Snow Leopard is 10.6 and essentially an upgrade to Leopard, leading me to believe I would need Leopard first before even thinking about that, but scouting around I've found signs that it can be installed on a system not using leopard.

From an Amazon review..
"Here's the REALLY good bit; I then put the disc into my MacBook Pro, which has Tiger on it. I'd backed it up, expecting this disc to do a clean install and trash everything on the target disc in the process. Not so; it too did a seamless upgrade, in about 40 minutes, leaving all documents and users intact. "

Would that also work from Panther? Is it just an install of 10.6 with a shockingly good cheap price? Or is my instinct to just fork out for 10.5 the right one?

Hope I've explained that okay!

Thanks

 

[miles01110]

You won't be able to install SL on your G5. It needs an Intel processor.

 

[Schtumple]

Snow Leopard will only work on intel processors, not your PowerPC G5, sorry, you'll need to buy a retail copy of Leopard. If I remember correctly, Leopard does allow you to seamlessly upgrade (without deleting programs and user settings, although I am not 100% sure as it might have required Tiger to do that. Regardless, back up your stuff before upgrading.

 

[forcefieldkid]

Ah okay, thanks for the replies guys, it felt too good to be true!

Be great if someone could confirm this...

If I remember correctly, Leopard does allow you to seamlessly upgrade (without deleting programs and user settings, although I am not 100% sure as it might have required Tiger to do that.

 

[Gregg2]

Yeah, you shouldn't have to wipe the hard drive to jump from Panther to Leopard.

The low cost of Snow Leopard is due to the fact that it's mostly a performance upgrade without a lot of feature enhancements, compared to Leopard. Therefore, Leopard users are not asked to pay top dollar for it. The agreement you accept says you have a licensed copy of Leopard on the computer.

Apple does not have registration codes like Windows, so you can install SL on an intel Mac running an older OS. It's not ethical, but it works. This is a grand experiment. If lots of people jump over Leopard and buy SL for $29, we'll never see another upgrade priced that low.

If you have Tiger or earlier, Apple wants to sell you the "Box Set" which is $169 and includes iLife '09. I wish they'd drop that, and the price. I'd pay the usual $129 to go from Tiger to SL, but I won't pay more and get other software I don't want.