A lot was said about Panther improving things dramatically on older machines. I've been using Jaguar fulltime on my iMac, for web browsing, office, email, and a few older games. The machine specs are:
Rev. D iMac (Lime)
333 Mhz G3
288 MB RAM
6 GB HDD
ATI Rage Pro C graphics with 6 MB VRAM (eg no quartz extreme)
Did an archive and install of Panther.
The result? It's a little wee bit faster than Jaguar, but it's not really noticeable. Apps such as iTunes, Safari, iPhoto, Word, Excell, even the Finder and System Preferences, all open in about the same number of bounces as they did in Jaguar.
Expose works but is a bit jerky as there is no quartz extreme. But I never have more than a couple of windows open so I don't see myself using it much.
So...I like the pearly white aqua, the new Finder, and little tweaks like labels, the way icons are highlighted and the way apps launch, but apart from that window dressing, I'm slightly underwealmed.
Panther is good on this machine. But nothing dramatic.
Zen
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