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pcryan5 · Mar 4, 2008, 04:44 PM

I purchased an old Powerbook G4 - 1.33ghz with 785MB ram - my question is - for this older model does Tiger or Leopard make most sense performance wise?

Thank you

pcryan5 · Mar 4, 2008, 04:47 PM

<>I purchased an old Powerbook G4 - 1.33ghz with 785MB ram - my question is - for this older model does Tiger or Leopard make most sense performance wise?

I should have mentioned - all I want to do is email, iWork & surf

kga1978 · Mar 4, 2008, 06:06 PM

I would go for Leopard - on my 1.5GHz it is quicker than Tiger!

JKT · Mar 4, 2008, 07:56 PM

Personally, I would probably stick with Tiger owing to the amount of RAM you have unless you are willing to bump that up to the maximum level as well.

Sherman Homan · Mar 4, 2008, 08:28 PM

Go for Leopard, after you do what JKT says, bump up that ram! Even if you stick with Tiger, bump up that ram. Too little ram will kill any comparison between operating systems.

JoshuaZ · Mar 4, 2008, 09:25 PM

I used to run 10.4 on the exact same Powerbook setup. It worked fine for day to day things. Stick with 10.4 and you'll be peachy.

naphtali · Mar 4, 2008, 10:24 PM

Leopard works great with my G4 1.33GHz (1 GB RAM). The discreet graphics really helped with the longevity of the machine.

I doubt that there is much of a difference from 785 MB (768 MB?) RAM, so it really should be peachy on your machine too!

peeb · Mar 4, 2008, 11:04 PM

Leopard. But more RAM!

pcryan5 · Mar 4, 2008, 11:35 PM

<>Leopard. But more RAM!

thanks all - I will up the 512MB panel to a 1GB - the base memory of 256MB is onboard I believe.

zaghahzag · Mar 5, 2008, 12:18 AM

get a new HD too. that will make it really crank. Those g4s are great little machines.

tinkered · Mar 5, 2008, 12:20 AM

What size your powerbook? 12"?

pcryan5 · Mar 5, 2008, 12:53 AM

It's a 12" - cute little thing. When the MBA came out I decided to buy one of these 2nd hand as they are going for a song now.

I have a Black MB & MBP so I won't invest much money into it. Extra ram seems to be enough.

Duracell · Mar 5, 2008, 01:38 AM

Originally Posted by pcryan5

I purchased an old Powerbook G4 - 1.33ghz with 785MB ram - my question is - for this older model does Tiger or Leopard make most sense performance wise?

Thank you

From personal experience, Leopard - Like other people have said, bump up the RAM a bit if you've got the money - You'd probably notice a difference over tiger regardless though.

Simon · Mar 5, 2008, 04:50 AM

With less than 2GB RAM I'd stay with Tiger.

OreoCookie · Mar 5, 2008, 06:01 AM

Upgrade your RAM to at least 1.5 GB and then you're good to go for Leopard.

amazing · Mar 5, 2008, 11:24 AM

writing this from my 12" 1.33 with Leopard and 1.25 GB RAM. Works very well under Leopard. There's great value in staying familiar with the latest version of the OS.

With one big caveat: DO NOT INSTALL the Leopard Graphics update, because that will kill DVD Player. There's big long threads on the Apple Discussions site, and I posted a thread here where others confirmed the problem. 10.5.2 update is fine, at which point you tell Software Upgrade to ignore the Graphics Update.

Big question is whether you have anything that needs Classic. If so, stay with Tiger.

SierraDragon · 02:01 PM

You do not mention which specific apps you use but my recommendation is to stay with 10.4.11. The latest Tiger is rock-solid on G4s and still well supported by Apple and app vendors. Leopard is not yet rock-solid for many apps (e.g. Adobe, Apple) and any speed benefit of Leopard over Tiger on G4s is small. In general I agree with amazing regarding staying with the latest OS versions, but only after each new version has proven rock-solid.

I agree with others, upgrade to max RAM no matter which OS you choose. Call OWC Find the latest Performance Upgrades, Firewire and USB Hard Drives, SATA, Memory, Laptop Battery, and more at OWC for presales info on what the max upgrade solution is for your specific box.

-Allen Wicks

pcryan5 · Mar 5, 2008, 10:53 PM

<>You do not mention which specific apps you use but my recommendation is to stay with 10.4.11.

"I should have mentioned - all I want to do is email, iWork & surf" (My follow up note http://forums.macnn.com/images/smili...school/eek.gif)

I can't imagine the poor folks who purchased this with the default 256MB. Now that must have been some painful.

Thanks to all for your input.

SierraDragon · Mar 6, 2008, 02:25 PM

I did see the generic usages you listed. By specific apps I was referring to specific apps like Safari, Firefox, Mail, Entourage, Internet Explorer, etc. Some of the apps among all possible mail/browser/iwork apps are bound to have some Leopard anomalies.

-Allen Wicks

peeb · Mar 6, 2008, 02:48 PM

Safari, Firefox, Mail and Entourage have no Leopard anomalies that I have heard of. Leopard is stable and good for almost everything right now. Adobe is the only question mark.

SierraDragon · Mar 6, 2008, 03:42 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

Adobe is the only question mark.

No question mark, Adobe has stated that Photoshop will not be fully compatible until OS 10.5.3.at the earliest allegedly due to OS anomalies.

-Allen Wicks

Koralatov · Mar 6, 2008, 04:19 PM

I run Leopard on an iMac G4 (1.25GHz, 1.25GB RAM), and it runs at least as well as Tiger. I think if you boosted the RAM, you’d be good to go. One word of warning though: iPhoto ‘08 is a tad “stately” (read: not fast) under both Leopard and Tiger. It’s not a major issue, and it still runs fine, but it’s just not as fast or smooth as it is on newer machine.

peeb · Mar 6, 2008, 07:28 PM

Originally Posted by SierraDragon

No question mark, Adobe has stated that Photoshop will not be fully compatible until OS 10.5.3.at the earliest allegedly due to OS anomalies.

-Allen Wicks

Agreed, but there are no major apps apart from some Adobe ones that I am aware of that are questionable under Leopard.

finalsortie · Mar 7, 2008, 12:47 PM

I am currently running 10.5.2 on a 1.07ghz iBook G4, 768 ram. I tax my system to the max when ever I use it. The computer is generally much faster and more responsive than it ever was under either Panther or Tiger. For basic usage such as email and surfing the web you should be fine. However, some extra ram would not hurt for iWork apps.

Although, I am very happy with their performance on my system, especially considering its specs. Photoshop CS2 works perfectly as well.

SierraDragon · Mar 8, 2008, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

Agreed, but there are no major apps apart from some Adobe ones that I am aware of that are questionable under Leopard.

Anecdotally Apple's Aperture v.2.0 had issues reported with Leopard but as I am still on 10.4.11 for Adobe reasons I cannot personally confirm that.

-Allen Wicks

tridentinecanon · Mar 9, 2008, 01:34 PM

What about on a G3 iBook?

Koralatov · Mar 10, 2008, 09:19 AM

Originally Posted by tridentinecanon

What about on a G3 iBook?

That’s a topic of some debate. Personally, if you have enough RAM in the machine (at least 512MB), and it’s fast enough (366MHz or better), I recommend Tiger as the OS to use; from my experience, it’s marginally faster than Panther is, it has Spotlight, Safari 3 and there are more apps available for it. Whilst it’s never going to scream, I use it on a daily basis on a 466 Clamshell with 576MB of RAM, and I’m really happy with the performance. The only thing it struggles with is video—both flash and DivX/Xvid. If it has a DVD drive, it’ll play DVDs fine though.

DCJ001 · Mar 10, 2008, 09:32 PM

Rather than buying Leopard, RAM, and/or a new hard drive, why not pay a little but more for a new MacBook that includes everything including a lot of additional features and better performance?

CharlesS · Mar 10, 2008, 10:23 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

Safari, Firefox, Mail and Entourage have no Leopard anomalies that I have heard of. Leopard is stable and good for almost everything right now. Adobe is the only question mark.

On my iMac G5, Leopard's Mail is a bit laggy. It can be especially bad if a Time Machine backup is going on at the time - if that's the case, it can lag a whole sentence or more behind what you type. I think it's a memory leak or something, because quitting and relaunching Mail seems to improve things.

bowlingb · Mar 11, 2008, 09:35 AM

Originally Posted by tridentinecanon

What about on a G3 iBook?

Leopard is not an option. The minimum processor is a G4.

bowlingb · Mar 11, 2008, 09:40 AM

Originally Posted by pcryan5

I purchased an old Powerbook G4 - 1.33ghz with 785MB ram - my question is - for this older model does Tiger or Leopard make most sense performance wise?

Thank you

This is my daily workhorse machine:
Model Name: PowerBook G4 15"
Model Identifier: PowerBook5,2
Processor Name: PowerPC G4 (1.1)
Processor Speed: 1 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 1
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 768 MB

I am running 10.5.2 right now with no performance issues. 10.5.1 seemed a bit laggy, but that cleared up with 10.5.2. I do plan to add more memory as time and budget allows.
BTW your initial 256MB should be installed in a removable lower memory slot. I would swap that one out next.