Foo - Upgrade to OS X 10.5? Or 10.4?

Ok, what will I lose and what will I gain by upgrading from my current 10.3.9 system to 10.5, or even just to 10.4.x?

I'm terrified of losing data or compatibility. Will the fancier graphics in 10.4 and higher slow down the GUI (it's already pretty terrible in 10.3).

My system is a PM G5 Dual 1.8 GHz, 1 GB RAM and an ATi Radeon 9600 64 MB gfx board.

Edit:
Even though I was an Apple tech support agent five years ago, I've very little interest in computers other than as a tool. It took me almost half a year to find that 10.4 was released when it was. I'm not a power user. I haven't even changed the background picture from that blue arc thing.

Dis is why I is comfortable with windoze...

Dis is why I is comfortable with windoze...Because you know without a doubt that everything is going to be broken if you dare to try to upgrade things?

CdCf, if you're not unhappy with the way it is now, it's safe to keep it where it is. 10.3.9 is, I assume, still perfectly usable. It's the last version I've used, so I couldn't tell you exactly what an upgrade would get you.

With such a powerful system, though, I can't imagine "slow" would be a term you'd find yourself using if you upgraded.

[edit: Though it's odd that you say it's slow already in 10.3.9. OS X has never seemed superfast to me, but a system like that shouldn't be slow.]

Get 10.5. It'll speed your machine up.

With such a powerful system, though, I can't imagine "slow" would be a term you'd find yourself using if you upgraded.

[edit: Though it's odd that you say it's slow already in 10.3.9. OS X has never seemed superfast to me, but a system like that shouldn't be slow.]

In my mind, I'm still comparing every new GUI to the most perfect GUI I've used so far - that of the Amiga in the early 90s. Lightning fast. OS 9 was fast as well, but highly unstable.

I don't know what it is, but Finder always feels slow to me. Like I'm working with something submerged in syrup. I find myself waiting for the GUI quite often.

Because you know without a doubt that everything is going to be broken if you dare to try to upgrade things?



No, cuz if it does get screwed up, I am confident I can get it going.
I gave my daughter a Mac, and I can't figure out how to work it.

I gave my daughter a Mac, and I can't figure out how to work it.

That's ridiculous.

That's ridiculous.

took me a long time to find the internets

In my mind, I'm still comparing every new GUI to the most perfect GUI I've used so far - that of the Amiga in the early 90s. Lightning fast. OS 9 was fast as well, but highly unstable.

I don't know what it is, but Finder always feels slow to me. Like I'm working with something submerged in syrup. I find myself waiting for the GUI quite often.

10.4 won't improve the Finder feel any over 10.3.9. Haven't tried 10.5 yet so not sure on that one.
I agree on the apparent slowness, never been happy with the trade off between the pretty graphics, and apparent speed. OSX has just always lacked that twitch speed you expect when working in the OS.

I'm about to get Leopard and look forward to it. I really like the auto back up feature.

No, cuz if it does get screwed up, I am confident I can get it going.
I gave my daughter a Mac, and I can't figure out how to work it.

I'm a database programmer with over a decade experience in Windows environment. I have a Mac at home and am relatively lost on the guts of how to manage the system. I have much more faith in the Mac and furthermore have never even needed to fix it.

You're only more comfortable with Windows because you know how to fiddle with it. That doesn't make it better.

Personally, my favorite UI would be a toss up between 4Dwm (IRIX), CDE (AIX), NeXTStep.

Windows is decent, Vista (factoring out hardware requirements) is an improvement with UI stuff (after I turned animations off because the 1/2 second it takes for the window animations add up.) MacOS is decent as well, although I really have no preference between MacOS's UI or Windows.

Linux -- well, I can't say much because I have not used the new UIs much (I mainly ssh into my Linux boxes), and can't comment with much authority.

Right now, until I get out of college, I have to be content with Vista as the main UI, and ssh command prompts.

if you use Airport much, wait for 10.5.1...

otherwise, 10.5 gets a big thumbs up from me...

whatever you do, get more ram! 1 GB is barely enough, anymore...

I would get leopard.
I could be mistaken, but mac doesn't have as many driver issues as windows because they only sell their computers with a handful of combinations, so there are less drivers and combinations to account for (relatively speaking). So there shouldn't be any compatibility issues, and if there are they would likely be reported on the web by now.
Also, Time Machine alone would convince me to go .5 over .4 if I was as concerned with data preservation as you.

I don't know if there are any PPC leopard issues, but that may be worth checking out.

good luck

I have 10.3 at home and 10.5 at work. I don't think I'll upgrade the home computer. It works great as it is, and I don't think there's anything in the newer versions worth risking breaking the old software we have on the home computer.

Or maybe it's because I hardly use the home computer anymore. My wife uses it, and i use my work laptop. So what do I care if the home computer doesn't have the latest features? I just want it to work flawlessly so I don't get tech support phone calls from home during the day.