Upgrade from os x 10.3.9

Hi, you will have to forgive me, i have the IT knowledge of a gnat. i am trying to upgrade my system but an finding it a minefield.

Currently i have an IMAC, Power PC G4 (2.1), CPU x 1, CPU speed 800mhz, memory 256mb running mac OS X 10.3.9.

I bought an ipod and now find it will only work with min 10.4.8 so i need to upgrade.

However, i have heard that some Tiger software is not compatible with my system as it is so old.

Can someone please tell me, in laymans terms, what software i need to buy in order to upgrade to the above, i have seen that some are cd, some are dvd, some are intel or PPC (that last one might be wrong . . .), some say os and other osx? And can i upgrade all the steps of 10.4 in one go or do i do it bit by bit.

Any advice greatly appreciated - this is driving me insane!!!!!

Thanks a million

Sam

After reading other posts (very useful) i have just bought another 256 mb of memory from Crucial. Im guessing this will be better for the new software and it has been running a bit slow of late . . . just need to know what software to buy now - please advise
Many thanks
Sam

You will need to buy a retail copy of Tiger, nay version will do as they can all be updated to 10.4.11 with Software update.

DO NOT buy any grey coloured intsall disks off places like ebay - these are model specific restore disks, and will almost certainly not work on your mac.

Buy ones called retail disks, the box and the disks will have a large X grapbic on them. You can find these on ebay and such like

All retails copies will be PPC - Apple never sold a retail copy for Intel

Your Mac will easily run Tiger ( I would have bought more ram tho - 500 meg is OK but tiger will fly with 1 gig or more

This is great - i will go and buy the retail copy. Thanks a million for the advice!!!!!!!

Sorry, just had a look on ebay and i see that some are selling OS X 10.4 and others are selling OS 1.4 - does it make a difference? Im currently running OS X 10.3.9. Sorry if this is a silly question . . .

nope, both are the same,