Panther or Tiger

Im researching macs still, dont know which one im buying yet, what is the major difference between 10.3 Panther and 10.4 Tiger. Only thing i can see is the new Search options, and the newer versions of all pre-installed software. Any difference on reliability and performance? I like how Tiger has the Dashboard...does Panther also have this? Some ibooks comes with panther, but now im seeing them all with tiger. Same with the mac mini, a few models still have the 10.3 OS on them. Just looking for everyones opinions on OS's.
Thanks
:headphone

maz94protege said:

Im researching macs still, dont know which one im buying yet, what is the major difference between 10.3 Panther and 10.4 Tiger. Only thing i can see is the new Search options, and the newer versions of all pre-installed software. Any difference on reliability and performance? I like how Tiger has the Dashboard...does Panther also have this? Some ibooks comes with panther, but now im seeing them all with tiger. Same with the mac mini, a few models still have the 10.3 OS on them. Just looking for everyones opinions on OS's.
Thanks
:headphone

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All new macs come with tiger. Panther does not have dashboard. hope this helps

Tiger is awesome, Got it on my Mac Mini which i got yesterday.

as EDIT-XTREEM says, Panther doesn't have the Dashboard. I didn't think i would really use the dashboard very much, But It's extremely usefull and help with alot of things. I don't have alot of experience with any of the past OS X versions, So can't really provide much of a comparison, But Tiger is awesome

as with all software, the newer version is better, dashboard and search may be the only visual changes, but behind the scenes many more things have changed so that you're computer runs smoother and better, and all new apple computers come with tiger.

And Spotlight which is a a god, its great!

zap2 said:

And Spotlight which is a a god, its great!

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Agree'd! Spotlight is awesome!

Thirded for Spotlight - reason enough to use Tiger for me, completely changes the way I organise my files. Plus I like the new version of Mail and if you are a Safari user the addition of RSS support is ideal.

That said Panther at 10.3.9 is a rock solid OS too, however if you can get Tiger - get it.

Vicky

The main gain in speed with tiger is if you have a video card which will support core image as then the window drawing/visual tasks are taken over by your graphics card leaving the processor free for other tasks. So if you install it on an older machine like my ibook G3 then their is little difference in speed.

Dashboard is great but you could always use Konfabulator which is free and does the same thing.

Not strictly true, Core Image doesn't do that.

Quartz 2D Extreme would however - if it worked and was enabled by default.

Core Image is in fact a very fast image processing library, which relies on certain graphics hardware to do its filters in the GPU as opposed to the CPU, rather than speeding up standard 2D drawing. This is a common misnomer about Core Image.

Anything from 10.2 which was the first version with Quartz 2D will be better peforming, that said - it has been optimised and tweaked since Panther and again a bit in Tiger.

Under the hood Tiger has changed a lot, consolidating various OS functions to improve compatibility in the future and making the way the system is extended and indeed programmed cleaner and less prone to crashes. This is why Tiger has suffered some teething issues if you will.

Ars Technica have an excellent review of Tiger, google will find it for you.

Vicky

Thanks guys, that helped. Im lookin at goin for the ibook 1.33ghz, but might settle for the mac mini 1.42ghz since its smaller and i already have a nice 15'' samsung lcd..and i have a usb keyboard and mouse also. But im deff getting tiger, heard so many good things about it. Im soo excited to switch off winblows too.

-J

My only suggestion is get an Apple keyboard, they're not expensive and you will get a keyboard with all the Mac specific keys such as the command and option keys, volume control and media eject button. Just a suggestion so you don't have to remember which PC keyboard key does what. They're not too expensive; I got my wired USB one for £19 - which is the price of a good quality PC keyboard; plus you get two extra USB ports on the back of it, handy on a Mac Mini.

Vicky

Yeah i have a Mac Mini, and it's awesome, but i need to invest in an Apple keyboard now as using a windows one is awful for all of the changed functions