06-10-2009, 09:34 AM

I need to upgrade my machine, and would be very grateful for some advice from the more knowledgeable.

At the moment I have a Powerbook G4, with the Panther OS. I want to upgrade so my laptop will be faster and more powerful, and will support at least Tiger OS, and preferably Leopard. I think this means I need a faster processor, possibly more RAM? I also want the best wireless capacity available - at the moment, I have a standard Airport card.

What I'm really asking is, will it be cheaper and more sensible to have my existing laptop upgraded in line with the above, or should I sell it and buy a new one? Either way, I would very much appreciate advice on how best to go about it. I live in London if that makes any difference, and I know very little about computers (as you can probably tell), so there is no question of me tinkering with the laptop myself.

Hope you can help. Thanks!

06-10-2009, 10:37 AM

I think you can go either way, I think buying new RAM and upgrading to Tiger would help you but only in the short term. I think you need to consider an upgrade soon but new ram and tiger could give you another year or so out of you system.

06-10-2009, 06:42 PM

I don't know all the specs on your computer, but I'm currently running Leopard on an early 2005 iBook G4, which came with 256MB ram, 30GB hard drive, and 1.2GHz processor. The only change I have made is upgrade to 1.25GB of ram. The system runs Leopard pretty smoothly most of the time, though I am noticing some somewhat small issues intermittently. I think the upgrade was well worth it because of the large improvement in usability from Panther to Leopard. However, I made the change shortly after Leopard came out, so it's been a while. If your computer is that old (i.e. 10.3) then I might suggest considering a whole computer upgrade. There's only so far you can drag a laptop through upgrades before it just has enough.