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Upgrading iBook G4 running on Tiger to Leopard?

G

Glumpfner

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 15, 2009
121
1
Hi there,

A friend of mine gave me her old iBook G4 so I can fix it. Something was wrong with it (half the applications are missing, spotlight reindexes everytime it restarts etc).

So I'm just gonna reinstall everything from the ground up. My question is though, should I install Tiger again or would Leopard be better?

The only thing I am afraid of is that Leopard would slow down the iBook since it's an older Laptop.

Here are the specs:

iBook G4 (PowerBook6,7)
CPU: 1.33GHz - PowerPC G4 (1.5)
512MB Ram
ATI Mobility Radeon 9550
40GB HDD
 
Glumpfner said:
Hi there,

A friend of mine gave me her old iBook G4 so I can fix it. Something was wrong with it (half the applications are missing, spotlight reindexes everytime it restarts etc).

So I'm just gonna reinstall everything from the ground up. My question is though, should I install Tiger again or would Leopard be better?

The only thing I am afraid of is that Leopard would slow down the iBook since it's an older Laptop.

Here are the specs:

iBook G4 (PowerBook6,7)
CPU: 1.33GHz - PowerPC G4 (1.5)
512MB Ram
ATI Mobility Radeon 9550
40GB HDD
Click to expand...
You could install leopard based on the specs but if its speed you are looking, for I would just install tiger unless there is something special in leopard that you want
 
I would max out the RAM if you want to run Leopard, and it's not very expensive to do. You can add a 1 GB stick (for a total of 1.5 GB) which runs about $44 at Other World Computing (might be cheaper if you shop around, I only looked at one place). Even if you don't run Leopard, maxing out the RAM is a great cheap way to perk up that iBook.

Full specs on that iBook:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/ibook/stats/ibook_g4_1.33_12.html

OWC's upgrade page for that model:
http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=229
 
Last edited:
I have an iBook G4, 1.33 GHz, and upgraded Ram with the 1GB stick and it performs well enough. My wife uses it and says it's perfectly fine for e-mail, web surfing, and things like that.
 
Hi there,

Thanks a lot. Well I am not sure if my friend wants to upgrade the Ram. I heard she wants to sell it anyways plus she is not in desperate need of a laptop in the first place. Apparently the laptop hasn't been working for the past 3 months.

Does the iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4 require Leopard as well?
I'll give Leopard a shot and if it's too slow I'll try Tiger.

Thanks all.
 
I have a G4 12" Powerbook 1.33 with 1.25GB memory. Tiger ran real fast on it and then last year I upgraded to Leopard. If found the boot time doubled to about 20 seconds (this is a clean install) and the display kept changing from black to blue and my selected backdrop repeatedly until it loaded the desktop. Shutdown took a long time (about 12 seconds). General use appeared to be not as snappy as Tiger. I watched some YouTube videos embedded on a website page and the fans kick in. It just seems to me that the Powerbook is really struggling with Leopard. Since I got a Mac Book Air, I am going to sell my the Powerbook. I wiped the drive and reinstalled a clean version of Tiger and had all the udpates done. Now it boots much quicker, runs a lot snappier and shutdown takes a few seconds.

I'd suggest that if you need software to run that requires Leopard, then install it. If not, go with Tiger. This OS runs well with the G4 laptop.
 
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