Here is a solution worth the about $200 which includes the cost of Leopard (10.5):
- 1. Obtain an External HD of sufficient size if not greater than your iMac's HD.
2. Obtain the program SuperDuper and "clone" your drive--make a "bootable copy." Takes about an hour or so depending on size.
3. Obtain a Leopard DVD by full approved legal methods all rights reserved avoid where prohibited by law no really cute animals were harmed in the making of this post.
4. THEN erase your Internal HD.
5. Loadeth Thou Leopard:--you may Erase, check the disk with Disk Aid and other fun things. Then, if you need to save space, you can Custom Install to limit the printer drivers, languages, blah blah.
6. When the Installer Asks if you would like to transfer a previous account, clicketh thou "yes."
7. Sacrifice a Virgin to the Gods of Apple [Tm.--Ed.]
That should give you a nice, happy OS 10.5
with your data. Anything lost you can then go to your External Drive and bring it over manually. Keep that Ex-HD--you can use it to back up your HD whenever you want. This will SAVE YOU in the future. I once screwed up my volume in my usual incompetence, started to run diagnostic program when I remembered, "hey! I have a [
CENSORED--Ed.] Ex-HD that was cloned last night!"
Spend a bit more and up your RAM. Assuming your iMac G5 is the 17" "Hero," you can get a wonderful 2.0 GB of RAM for about $
80 to
100. I have dealt with the first and have had a very good experience.
Oh, and finally, rather than online updating your Leopard, go to the
www.apple.com, and download the Combo Updates. THEN click and go. I generally let Al Gore's Internet handle the automatic updates, but I read of people having problems afterwards. I did experience this once--downloaded the Combo-Update--
voila!
A
Guru can tell you whether you should download and update with EACH Combo-Update, or if you can just use the last one. Once your system is up-to-date--10.5.7--you can run
System Update to update your iTunes, QuickTime, Porn-Finder,
et cetera.
--J.D.