Pete-
I have always liked to be on the bleeding edge, though I have suffered at times for it. I was positive in speaking about OS X (10.0.4), but hesitant to tell my friends to upgrade to X. That was for a few reasons, 1) 10.0.4 was slow. Dog slow on slower machines, like my 300mhz iBook, 2) Native applications were lacking and 3) a new system to learn.
As they say, that was then, this is now. As I am using 5G64 now and it is GM, I can say that they have come a *long* way. Many here know the latest builds were getting good and this is quite excellent. The speed on my Rev. A. iBook is not 9.2, but close enough that you won't notice or care if you do. Since the spring, many more applications have come out and now running Classic is much better, if you have to . I have not booted into Classic for some time, weeks even. Slowly as I replace Classic Apps with X apps, Classic will fade for me, much as each previous Classic sysytem did.
As to your case, I think you will find OS x quite snappy running a G4 450 and you seems to have plenty of RAM. (No one should have ANY excuse for having too little RAM, it is DIRT cheap) Your biggest question is are the applications you need written for X? The common stuff is, but if you are always running a program that runs only in Classic, you will have to think about it. I have only a few programs that keep me in Classic, but the list is getting shorter.
The jump that Apple made from 10.0.4 to 10.1 is amazing, they did great work. I would say it is worth upgrading, but consider what I said and go from there.
Personal Bias: Absolutely upgrade, you'll be glad you did.
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