can my mac handle leopard?

December 21, 2007 6:48 PM

Yet-another-Mac-Leopard-upgrade question: Should I do it on my older machine?

I saw this question, and it's very close to what I want. However, my specs are just a little different. I have a G4 PowerPC second-hand Mac, 1GHz, and only 256 MB DDR SDRAM (or so it says under "About this Mac"). I used it in school for a lot of design homework, but now I do all that stuff at work and only need my home machine for basic tasks like music, photo storage, and web. My Mac is a little slow (spinning beachball of death), and I like the idea of a clean install and starting over. I don't have the original system discs.

I do, however, have a Leopard installation disc. If I back everything up that I want to keep, can my machine handle a clean upgrade? Or, if you don't want to do my homework for me, is there a website or forum where I can find out?

posted by kidsleepy to computers & internet (13 comments total)

RAM RAM RAM.
upgrade the ram, get at LEAST 1GB (its so cheap right now) and you should be ok. YMMV.
posted by ShawnString at 6:51 PM on December 21, 2007

this is the kind of stuff i'm clueless about. when you say cheap, how much? where do i buy it? i know how to use a mac, but i'm clueless about all the internal stuff.
posted by kidsleepy at 7:03 PM on December 21, 2007

Crucial.com is a really good place to plug in your details and figure out what the cost for some RAM will be. They'll tell you what you have, what it can take (what sort of configuration of RAM slots etc) and they have usually competitive prices. They even have a scanner in case you don't even know what you have. Your computer, if I'm reading this right, has one slot and you can put a 1 GB stick of RAM in there. It will cost about $90. You can do the install youself, it involves popping out the keyboard and unscrewing some things but it is NOT major surgery. I do not have more advice on the Leopard angle.
posted by jessamyn at 7:15 PM on December 21, 2007

i got excited about crucial.com and the scanner- sounds like just what i need. unfortunately, after running it, "the page i requested can not be found." dang it.
posted by kidsleepy at 7:29 PM on December 21, 2007

You need more RAM. Any OS X will hit swap with only 256 MB of RAM.

Other than that, it's hard to say without knowing what you're running now. Folks who ought to know tell me that Leopard is slightly, but not always noticeably, more efficient with CPU than Tiger is.

Swap, incidentally, is virtual memory - if your computer can't get enough RAM it will use the hard disk to store memory, and then 'swap' the file from the HD into RAM when needed. To find out how much swap you are using at any given time you can run Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and type

ls -l /var/vm

at the prompt. If there's more than 1 swapfile you could benefit from more RAM.
posted by ikkyu2 at 7:36 PM on December 21, 2007

Hmm...I followed ikkyu2's instructions, I apparently have five swapfiles, and the memory on my 1st gen intel macbook is maxed out already at 2GB. What does that mean?
posted by bingo at 8:07 PM on December 21, 2007

I get my ram from DMS Memory. I have been getting 1GB dimms (granted for MAc Book Pros) for about $50 each.
posted by ShawnString at 8:10 PM on December 21, 2007

I'm not sure that looking at the total number of swap files is really the best gauge of memory usage. I think you'd be better going into top and looking at the ratio of pageins to pageouts. If there are a lot of pageouts, relative to the number of pageins, you're thrashing swap.

But this really isn't relevant when you're talking about 256MB of RAM -- that's miniscule for a modern machine. I don't care what you're doing; you need to upgrade if you want to consider going to 10.5. I'd max your computer and never have to do it again, but get at least a gig.

As to whether or not you should upgrade, I always like to have all the machines in my house at the same major OS release (10.2, 10.3, 10.4, etc.), just because it makes them more interoperable, and keeps me from having to keep in mind the differences between them. Right now, I'm actually holding back on the 10.5 upgrade because it won't install on some of my older machines, and I'd rather be all-10.4 than a mix of 10.4 and 10.5. But if you can get all your hardware up to spec and you have a 10.5 Family Pack, I don't think there's any reason not to upgrade.

Of course, some people always recommend waiting until the first point release of any new Apple system, but that's a different question.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:32 PM on December 21, 2007

Should I do it on my older machine?

No. You'll crack the screen.

alternative: that's a terrible nickname for your wife.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way: it really is all about the memory, and the drive speed, and drive space. If the computer is working fine, and you just find it painfully slow, don't upgrade the OS, upgrade the RAM -- all things being equal, I've never heard of an upgrade to an OS (other than a point release) that made a machine run faster, as OS upgrades tend to introduce new features that eat up more disk space and RAM.

If it were my money, and if I had all the original installation disks and third-party application disks handy, I'd do this:

#1: upgrade the memory, and make sure it's moving fast enough to make me happy;

#2: back up important files, then do a fresh install of the original OS (to get rid of the cruft and all that) and run with it.

If -- and only if -- I found myself wishing I could do things that only Leopard does, or needing to upgrade for compatibility or similar reasons, would I upgrade to Leopard.

note: I'm typing this on a 1.5GHz G4 with 1GB of RAM, and have never felt the need to upgrade to Leopard, but if I were running 256mb I would probably be slamming this machine against the wall with impatience.
posted by davejay at 12:15 AM on December 22, 2007

While most OS X upgrades tend to be quicker on older hardware than previous versions, the problem with Leopard is a slightly larger memory footprint, so I don't think it's worth it in the current state. Everyone else's advice about memory is sound.

I have Leopard on a 1.42GHz Mac Mini with 1GB of memory and it runs pretty well, so if you can get it up to that, give it a go!
posted by wackybrit at 5:38 AM on December 22, 2007

thanks for all the advice. unfortunately, davejay, i don't have the original install discs. i do have a family pack of leopard (from my grandfather).

i'd like to tackle this project over the long weekend. can i just go to Best Buy to get RAM? (there's one right down the street). will they be able to help me figure out what kind? what kind of specs do i need before i go and where can i find them on my machine (since crucial.com isn't working for me)?
posted by kidsleepy at 7:43 AM on December 22, 2007

I agree with davejay. Unless I had a special need for Leopard, I wouldn't install it on a non-Intel Mac.

I've used this site to help me determine the right kind of RAM to get. I noticed that there are three different models of 1GHz G4s, so you'll need to narrow it down. Assuming it's not a laptop...
posted by kidbritish at 9:11 AM on December 22, 2007

best buy isn't called 'best bet' for a reason. they'll sell you stuff. it may even work.

find out what you need before you go buy it. don't let them do it.

do you have an external drive? i would clone your existing drive to an external, (using carbon copy cloner or the other one whose name escapes me now) max out the RAM (one slot? is it an iMac?) do a clean install, then let migration assistant copy what it needs to. (assuming you already have OS X on there)

leopard will probably make it run better/faster. upping the RAM most certainly will. it'll help your hard drive last longer too.

then you can use the external for Time Machine (auto backup). that alone makes it worth the upgrade, in my opinion.

and yes, 10.5.1 is out. 10.5.2 is expected to be out at Macworld SF (Jan 14-18)
posted by KenManiac at 9:26 AM on December 22, 2007