I have a refurbished iMac that didn't come with an installation disc. I have heard about "machine specific" discs and I wonder if that means that I am up the creek? Any help appreciated. Thanks Lmc
You'll either need the machine's original installation discs (even refurbished iMacs should come with their original discs AFAIK) - or you'll need a retail disc.
Best wait for the arrival of the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Mac Box Set (if it's an intel iMac, that is), which will include the newest versions of Mac OS X, iLife and iWork. That'll set you up fine. Will be available in September.
You could purchase a New or 2nd hand Tiger 10.4.0, or Leopard 10.5.0 retail discs from Apple, eBay or Amazon and install the OSX without a problem. You need 876mgz min to install Leopard.
I was under the impression Snow Leopard is an upgrade to Leopard... my thoughts were you need Leopard installed to upgrade to Snow Leopard, forgive if I am wrong.
My research shows you need Leopard already installed to get Snow Leopard for the expected price of $29. This is an upgrade. You have to buy the Snow Leopard, iLife, iWork, Box Set if your instaling from Tiger (previous OSX). Still cannot determine if this box set can be used as a CLEAN install.
If you have bought leopard, you are eligible for the 30 dollar upgrade, If you bought a mac, that originally came installed with Leopard, you can also get snow leopard for 30 bucks, The box set allows a fresh install.
1.) 9.99$ for people who recently bought a Mac (I don't know the exact date).
2.) 29$ for intel/Leopard users.
3.) 49$ for intel/Tiger users.
4.) And then there's the Mac Box Set containing iLife and iWork, and that's 169$ AFAIK (could be wrong).
3.) and 4.) can be used without having a previous version installed. All can be used for a clean install, but 1.) and 2.) require you to have the previous version installed on the harddrive. It'll then let you erase the volume and install cleanly.
Apple is not offering Snow Leopard (available for pre-order today!) at the $129 price point. Choices are Leopard upgrade for $29 or Box Set for $169. The SL installer does not have an "Upgrade" option anymore. Only choice is Archive & Install (clean install), besides Erase & Install accomplished using Disk Utility to first erase the hard disk).
fryke: $49 is for the 5-user family pack of the Leopard-to-SL upgrade.