Leopard 10.5 on a 800mhz G4? Good idea?

I have been reading about people running 10.5.8 on these older G4s and there seems to be a lot of success with it. I have an 800mhz g4 iMac (1gb RAM) that is currently running 10.4.11, and I would love to put 10.5 on it (for itunes 10 and iphoto '09 compatibility). But, my gf still uses this computer almost daily. I don't want to slow it to a crawl.

Anybody out there running 10.5.* on a slower G4 and finding it acceptable??

brairden said:

Anybody out there running 10.5.* on a G4 and finding it acceptable??

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Remember that "running 10.5 on a G4" can mean different things to different people. "G4 computers" can have as fast as a 1.67ghz processor on some Apple laptops, and dual 1.42ghz processors on some desktops....that's a BIG speed difference compared to the G4 computer you mentioned.

Also realize that officially (according to Apple)...you need at least an 867mhz G4 processor to install 10.5 (you only have an 800mhz cpu). But there are supposed to be 3rd party installers to get around the 867mhz requirement.

The slowest computer that I have running OS 10.5 is a 933mhz Powermac G4...and although it's no speed demon...it runs fast enough.

Hope this helps,

- Nick

With 1GB of RAM, you should be pretty good. I've got 10.5.8 on my fiancee's computer, it's a 1.25GHz G4 eMac with 512MB of RAM. Plus Time Machine is excellent, and probably worth any accompanying slow down.

Whilst it is trial and error method, Google for a utility called LeopardAssist if you wish to experiment and see how others have done, however strongly suggest to avoid disappointment stick with Tiger OS X.4:-

LeopardAssist | Download LeopardAssist software for free at SourceForge.net