I WANT to make the switch!!!

[eric2006]

There's no upgrade pricing, but I believe that you get a free upgrade if you bought within a month of Leopard's release. (They do this with iLife, anyways) Eventually, Tiger will be the "old" OS, you're going to have to upgrade some time..

[Lt Major Burns]

apple doesn't distinguish between full OS, and upgrade versions, technically, with the Mac OS being bound to the computer, and every mac having mac OS, every copy of OSX is an upgrade, so $129 is upgrade pricing. as you said previously, it's cheaper than windows, even for upgrade.

i would buy when you want, thena assess from the early birds on here what leopards like, and then choose when you want to upgrade, if at all. many people choose to upgrade every two releases, as it's just more economical that way. many people use Panther (10.3) as it's still very much a modern OS, and is still very similar to Tiger. the only major thing i miss not having tiger is instant searching (Spotlight). Tiger is still miles ahead of everything else, Leopard will only extend that lead.

also, you could be waiting 4-5 months for Leopard to come out, and a further 2-3 months for 10.5.3, or 10.5.4 updates to get it stable. i'd go tiger, you won't be dissapointed. a list of leopards features can be found at www.apple.com/macosx

[Bio-Gene]

Well I guess I will go with the Tiger OS-X as well. Now all I have to do is get a bit more money, I am trying to save up for both university tuition and a MacBook Pro! I hope that Scholarships can help me, and that the student discount Apple gives me is helpful! Oh by the way, other than the specs that I want which include:

* 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 1440 x 900 pixels
* 1GB memory
* 120GB hard drive1
* 6x double-layer SuperDrive
* ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics with 128MB SDRAM
What do you guys think I should get beside the hardware? As in software, like the Office 2004 for Mac or Adobe photoshop CS2 or should I wait for CS3.

[eric2006]

Defiantly wait for the universal versions if you can, otherwise, they'll be running under Rosetta, and it will feel like you're working on a G3..

1 GB memory should be sufficient, but you'd defiantly see improved performance with more. Third party RAM is often cheaper than Apple RAM.

[Bio-Gene]

Eric about that, All I would be updating is the RAM and if I did it myself then I could have a Mac the same second I pay for it, since I would not have to wait for the 2 day shipping and stuff. Anyways my question is does best buy offer cheaper RAM or is it almost the same deal? Cause all I will be paying more is $129 dollars, and when I went to the best buy website I could not find their ram, only like one stick for a laptop which was 128MB! lol!

[Mikuro]

Some good sites to look for RAM are crucial.com (very good reputation) and dealram.com (an index of lots sellers; great prices, but mostly "generic" RAM).

I agree with Eric on Photoshop. It's awfully expensive, so if you don't NEED it now, I'd wait up. CS3 will perform MUCH better than CS2 on your machine, so you'll definitely want it. In the meantime, you could try some free alternatives like the GIMP.

I also recommend at least trying free alternatives to MS Office before buying it. We've already mentioned NeoOffice a couple times in this thread. It's worth a look.

[eric2006]

Usually, the cheapest RAM is online. Here's a good search that will find compatible RAM: http://www.macseek.com/. Through that, 1 GB is $99, and 2 GB is under $200.

[Lt Major Burns]

apple RAM is currently undercutting crucial by about 5%. that myth appears to be dormant for the time being.

also, i would never reccomend buying cheap ram. always go for either Kingston or Crucial ram. bad Ram can crippple a computer.