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#1
April 30th, 2006, 08:10 AM
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| What version of OSX should I use for my new mac? I just bought a Power Mac G4 500mhz with 256MB RAM off ebay for $150 including shipping and was wondering what version of OSX would run smoothly on it? It does not have an OS on it from the ebay description. It probably won't get to my house till late this week I'm guessing so I have enough time to order the software for it.
__________________ Mac Pro 2.66GHz, 3GB RAM, 320GB+500GB HDDs iPhone 8GB  |
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#2
April 30th, 2006, 08:15 AM
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| Panther. Mac OS X 10.3.9. You should get more RAM for the machine, though, because _any_ version of Mac OS X doesn't run that well with only 256 MB RAM - unless you're planning on only using TextEdit.  ... Also keep in mind that the machine should run OS 9.2.2 quite fine!
__________________ MacBook Air 13" 1.6 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB HD. Mac OS X 10.5.5 MacBook 13" 1.83 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HD. Mac OS X 10.5.5 Hackintosh Core2Duo 2.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HD. Mac OS X 10.5.5 iPhone 3G 16 GB (v2.1), AppleTV 1G 40 GB (v2.1) Mac user since 1987, Apple Product Professional 2007, 2008. |
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#3
April 30th, 2006, 08:17 AM
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| my brother has a similar power mac. get a 512mb ram stick for it, which should only be about $40, and then you're laughing.
__________________ Dual 1.8GHz G5 2GB, 1TB, Radeon 9600XT 128MB, 10.5 20" Apple Cinema Display + Dell 2005FPW 20" dual-head iBook G3 700MHz 640MB, 40GB, Rage128 16MB, 10.4, dying battery |
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#4
April 30th, 2006, 08:18 AM
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| First, I would say upgrade the RAM to 512 MB or greater. Then you could either go for Panther or Tiger. At this point with 10.5 eminent, you might be better served with Tiger. Many will complain about the Dashboard, but I haven't had any problems with it (of course, I'm running an iMac G5 so that doesn't count). Fortunately, there are applications out there that can kill Dashboard if you don't want it.
__________________ • Apple iMac G5 17" (2 GHz G5) - Mac OS X 10.4.11 • Apple Macintosh Quadra 650 (33 MHz MC68040) - Mac OS 8.1 • Apple PowerBook Duo 230 (33 MHz MC68030) - System 7.1 • "JHVH-1" (2 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2400+) - Slackware 12.1 • "Kidbuntu" (2.8 GHz Celeron D 335) - Ubuntu 8.04 |
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#5
April 30th, 2006, 08:19 AM
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| Tiger will run just fine as long as you don't use Dashboard. A friend of mine has a similar computer which he uses for software development.
__________________ leo at code.coop Co-operatives are private corporations based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. |
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#6
April 30th, 2006, 08:26 AM
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| I'd recommend 10.3 Panther. The key factor here is RAM. Panther is reasonably happy with 256MB. Tiger is not. With Panther, 256 is the practical minimum and 512 is the "sweet spot". With Tiger, 512 is the practical minimum and 1GB is the sweet spot. At least, that's my experience. When I bought my Mac Mini, it only had 256MB. I found this perfectly usable until I upgraded to Tiger. Even without using Dashboard (which was simply not an option with 256MB), it clearly wanted more RAM than Panther. There is no reason to go below 10.3, because it's simply better than 10.2 Jaguar, period.
__________________ Mac mini — 1.25GHz G4, 1GB RAM — OS 10.5.2 I'm now a four-browser man. How on earth did this happen?! Useful programs: PithHelmet, Butler, ffmpegX, VLC, Perian, Tofu, Wcalc |
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#7
April 30th, 2006, 09:16 AM
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| Rule of Thumb: Run the newest OS which your hardware can handle. MacOS X 10.4 can run everything that MacOS X 10.3 can, but the reverse is not true. Everyone suggests that you upgrade your RAM. I concur. No one mentioned hard drive capacity. MacOS X may love RAM, but it is addicted to hard drive space. As a rock floor, you must have 10 GB HD but I recommend the largest hard drive you can get. |
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#8
April 30th, 2006, 11:52 AM
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| IceDigger The very first thing you want to do is download the Firmware for this machine from Apple, HERE If the machine doesn't have a system on it, you have to install OS 9 first, then run the Firmware updater 'BEFORE' trying to install OS X. Personally, I would install 10.3 (Panther) on this machine.
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