Should I upgrade to Leopard?

Hi. I have your computer, except with more RAM (1.5 GB). You should be fine.

I dislike Spaces, but maybe you’ll like it. The upgrade is definitely worth it, unless you’ll be buying a new laptop in the near future.

bob’s right on the money…aside from spaces, Leopard r-o-c-k-s; can’t seem to get used to the spaces thing-more of a chore remembering which space uses which app and relying on app switcher (apple + tab) to bounce around rather than the space-switching hot key. Things I personally dig about Leopard:

-Time Machine-saved me already in two situations!
-.mac enhancements/sync improvements overall
-the new Mail App features-To Do’s works well
-Preview is awesome!
-Stacks-eh, take or leave
-Some apps (Safari) still a bit buggy at times still-but not unmanageable but should be fixed in updates…
-new iChat is insane but none of my friends have Leopard yet-so I’m just chatting with myself at home between desktop and laptop (wow-that sounds sadder than it actually is)

However, I’m still waiting on several promised enhancements that alas did not ship with 10.5.0/.1:
-updated flash integration
-true A2DP integration for bluetooth audio i/o
-Quicktime: captioning interface to enable users to input/sync their own cc (argh!) and AVC/AAC HD support (half-baked even with AVCHD argh argh!)
-tighter iPhone integration i.e. To-Do’s syncing, etc. but is prob. iPhone s/w update related..
-and not related directly but iMovie 08 s——let’s just say they can have that one back…

a solid **** stars so far; LIGHT YEARS ahead of Vista (blech-need to go wash mouth out now)...lol

What? I love spaces!!! Its like have a 80” display (4 spaces + 20” display).

Short answer, you’ll love Leopard. Its totally worth the money. It’ll do great on your machine. You should look into throwing another gig of RAM in though. Its sooo cheap now. I just bought another gig for my MacBook Pro for less than $30 (memoryx.com).

Do you plan on getting a new machine anytime soon? If you are I would suggest putting the 130$ towards that. That is my plan. I plan on getting a new iMac in about nine months so I don’t want to pay for the OS twice. I will apply what I would spend on 10.5 on a new computer.

Nothing is really compelling enough to make it feel like I need the upgrade. The 130$ will get me a new iMac a couple of months early. I am doing just fine with 10.4

I’d concur with johnpowell – I lost the hard drive in my Powerbook, and I was 100 miles from my Tiger install disks, so I bought Leopard. (The data was backed up, but my Powerbook is of such a vintage that I can back it up to a USB drive but I can’t boot from a USB drive.)

Unless you see features that you really need or want (and for different users, Time Machine, Spaces, improved Spotlight, and improved Mail might qualify), stick with Tiger. Leopard is solid and useful, and runs acceptably well on my original 12” Powerbook (well, at least once Spotlight re-indexing was done), but there’s nothing that compelling from a user-facing point of view.

In six months or so, once there are apps out that take advantage of the developer-facing improvements, my advice will be different.

Thanks for the input, all. My father’s buying a group upgrade for the family to share at Xmas, so it’s no financial burden…and it sounds like it’ll run fine on my G4 machine. I may take Spargett’s advice and add some RAM, though. Anyway, thanks!

Hey- I can’t recommend Leopard enough buddy- Apple has some amazing stuff, and it all just keeps getting better. Go for it dude. Oh, and enjoy your iPhone- they are amazing- (I’m writing this out on mine).

def worth it.

Spotlight is much improved and Time Machine is great, but is you have Quicksilver and back up regularly then wait. Now is you are a multiple Mac family then they are addition reasons to upgrade.