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I've got the same G4(in my sig.) and I'm currently running 10.4.8 on it. Some of Tiger does run alot slower then on my Macbook, but it's still quite usable. I say if you can find Panther for next to nothing, go with it. Otherwise go with Tiger.
 
There's waaaay more to Tiger than Dashboard and Spotlight. It's true that a fair amount of functionality in Tiger isn't obvious to the average end user, but already there's some software that runs better in Tiger and in some cases not at all on Panther because of that.

Thank you at least someone realizes this! I personally think this biggest plus for tiger is its under the hood changes. Yes I love spotlight, but apple did alot of work under the hood that is why there was not as many large new features.
 
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