Operating system help

Hi all , Happy New Year
I was given a Mac Laptop G4 , I would like to buy the tiger operatiing system for this , as the one loaded on the computer now won't let me update to the new I tunes , if memory servers its 10.3 something , can I just buy a disk and format the laptop , kinda like would be done with windows ? is there a special OS for laptops ? any help ,so I dont make the wrong purschase would be great
thanks for your time

Hi. Yes, you can buy Tiger for the laptop, but you will have to buy a generic full install DVD disc (black faced), as Tiger never came with a G4, so you won't find the machine specific discs you would require for that machine.
Be prepared to pay £60-100 though, it's still very much in demand.

all so do I need the orignal disk for the laptop to make the upgrade ?
thanks for the reply

No, the Tiger disk is a full OS disc, no need to have the old disc

You will need Leopard (10.5) in order to install the latest iTunes (iTunes 10, it will not install on Tiger).

The G4 will require a 867Mhz or faster CPU to install OS X 10.5.

You still need the black retail disc, not one of the grey discs all over ebay.
Do not need the original disc to install Leopard.
You cannot install Snow Leopard 10.6 on that machine.

so this would work , I belive its over a 1 gig processor , not near the laptop at the moment ebay item # 190483860201
thanks for all the help

more info its a 933 with 640 megs of ram , will that be OK

Well it will, but more RAM will be almost essential really, because it will be very sluggish, even when maxed out, because the processor is old, and the OS new.

Which flavour of iTunes? Quite soon I suspect that the newest flavour of iTunes will only run on intels with Snow Leopard. I run iTunes 7 quite happily & it does everything I want. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!!"
Cambridge Paul