Hmm. Good to know. Glad it worked out for you. The boot time will be slower, but the OS runs very fluidly. Leopard is definitely a very different OS than panther. You missed the midway point, Tiger, which introduced a few of the many new to you features. Spotlight was added in Tiger, so you can hit command space bar to search for anything on your hard disk in real time, using file name and contents as searchable fields. That's a very handy feature. It's also incorporated into searchable menus, like if you hit command O to open in an app, and in the System prefs pane. You may recognize the search style from itunes.
Spaces is a handy one, but I can't vouch for the performance on an eMac using it, I could try and test it out at some point (or you could). It's a multiple desktop mechanism added in Leopard. You can turn it on in the system preferences panel for "spaces." Control 1-last space will take you directly into that space so you can concentrate on your workflow that you have in that screen. Also control arrow keys, but I turned them off because they annoyed me.
Exposé is nice... I dunno. Check out the feature list, and maybe check for some tutorials on the OS. I think you'll enjoy your experience.