[texanpenguin]

Plus there's the fact that Apple will only support Panther for a little while after the release of Tiger.

Application developers too.

It's always worth an upgrade once you can afford it. I'd probably wait until 10.4.3 or so before purchasing so that you know the teething problems have been ironed out. But as a student, it's really cheap enough that it should be considered an essential.

Plus it'll make your computer run faster (for some things; code optimisation is the bomb)