I’ve had a few folks ask about Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. Have I seen it first hand? No. Have I upgraded to it? No. Do I want to? Yes.
I’ve been reading a lot about it[arstechnica], and it seems like something I could really use, like, and get used to. There are so many features that I would love to get my hands on, and there are some pretty neat podcasting tools that have peaked my attention.
Still, I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet. In due time, it’ll come. Rebecca’s MacBook can handle it, and the iMac will cruise right along with it. However, I’m thinking that my 17-inch Powerbook G4[wiki], this being my major hesitation before leaping into Leopard, might not like or be able to fully handle the new OS.
Right now, I’m running 1GB of RAM on my Powerbook, and the maximum I can put into it is 2GB. There lies the dilemma. Do you make the upgrades or do you consider an overall upgrade, getting a flavor of MacBook with a faster processor?
It’s a no-brainer as to what you should do, but the reality of what you, and the bank account, can do is another.
I’m incredibly jealous of the track pad on Rebecca’s laptop and the ability to use it to scroll. I swear that ups the ability to do things faster, and it might be time for me to downgrade to a smaller laptop for the sake of portability.
That brings me back to Leopard. The Spaces feature means that you don’t need a huge screen real estate, the reason I got this first generation 17-inch, to be efficient. I think I could be happy with a 13-inch screen, and the ability to have Firewire 800 is a consideration that I could live without, but prefer. Still, with the iMac at home, I can survive on Firewire 400 when being portable with my external hard drive, but even that lives at home most of the time.
After that, I have a little issue with being on the bleeding edge. I’ll let those brave souls out there be the first to be first. If there are any issues, let them figure that out and have the fixes come down as a result. I haven’t heard of anything huge yet, but never say never.
Until then, I’ll keep contemplating upgrades for my Powerbook and looking for cheap RAM for a laptop that was discontinued about as soon as it was released.
What’s your ram configuration right now (and spec)?
I’ve got at least one 512mb stick (possibly two) that should be compatible with your powerbook. If one or both can fit inside, they are yours!
I bit the bullet in the summer time with my 3 1/2 year old 12″ powerbook since the price of ram was ridiculously low at Fry’s while I was in Portland (hence the extra stick or two). Think it was only $27 for a gig stick (no tax! woohoo!) so I figured that should hold me until Leopard and/or the long rumored ultra-slim-and-sexy macbook pro mini nano.
No new Macbook yet but Leopard is here….still haven’t upgraded the powerbook yet (needed for iPhone hacking for a little while longer) but the iMac has the upgrade and it’s smokin’ fast now.
Both slots have 512’s in them, so I’ll have to get two 1GB sticks to put inside the Powerbook. Since it’s discontinued, I think that makes the price a little higher for new RAM for it.
If you know where I can find a sweet deal, let me know! 🙂
I bit the bullet on “opening night”, as much to review it for the podcast as anything.
My advice: no rush. Unless you _really_ think you need Spaces, or Time Machine there really doesn’t appear to be a ton of new *useful* features.
I’ll be going through the “list of 300 features” on the Apple website in the next couple of days and trying to ascertain what the most useful 20 are… I’m really not sure what to make of this new cat just yet.