Used Leopard Purchase

[PDACPA]

Is there any reason I should not buy a copy of Leopard from Ebay (ie used)? Trying out the Mac as I picked up a new iphone 3G and have a Mac Mini but it has Tiger. It has the intel chip and will max out the ram for use with Leopard.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Schtumple]

It's pretty much the same as buying a used copy of Windows, however Leopard doesn't have any kind of serial number that needs to be tied with a certain PC, you'll be find, get a bargain!

 

[mkrishnan]

Make sure you buy a legitimate retail copy. If there are pictures of the DVD, it should be black DVD(s) with the stylized X logo, and not one or more grey DVD. The grey ones are system install/restore discs and they do not work on any Macs except the model / generation with which they were sold (and they're not licensed for any other use either). So both legally and pragmatically, the grey discs will not be useful to you. If the sale shows a box then just of course make sure it's a retail Leopard box.

And all the other warnings about eBay apply. But on the fundamentals of using Leopard, yeah, sure, why not?

 

[PDACPA]

Thanks guys. I was thinking of the Windows serial and tying to a specific PC.

With the new snow coming out, should I expect a discount or do they pretty much go for retail?

 

[mkrishnan]

With the new snow coming out, should I expect a discount or do they pretty much go for retail?

Snow Leopard is expected mid to late next year... it's pretty unlikely you'll see SL related discounting anytime soon... what you see more of is the cusp of replacement of computers that shipped with Panther or Tiger and were upgraded to Leopard by computers that shipped with Leopard (and then the person sells off their copy of Leopard). The prices tend to slowly decline over time as a result of that -- but I don't think you'll see a big drop associated with SL until basically after it comes out.

 

[PDACPA]

That must have been the case. The seller installed a "fresh" copy of Tiger. I am guessing he had Leopard on there, but kept his Leopard.

Ebay copies are all over the board from retail of $129 to the 60 range.

 

[mkrishnan]

Ebay copies are all over the board from retail of $129 to the 60 range.

If it's a useful reference, I sold my copy of Tiger on 11/29/07 for $55 shipped (here on MR, actually, so the pricing was lower than it would've been on eBay because it didn't include as many fees)... this was about a month after Leopard had come out. But that was a very reasonable going price at the time, and Tiger for students was only $69, dropping the average sale price... so yeah, if you can get Leopard for $60 now, I don't think that you'll get a much better deal by waiting, unless you wait till... 2010!