What version of OSX should I use for my new mac?

I

IceDigger

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I just bought a Power Mac G4 500mhz with 256MB RAM off ebay for $150 including shipping and was wondering what version of OSX would run smoothly on it? It does not have an OS on it from the ebay description.

It probably won't get to my house till late this week I'm guessing so I have enough time to order the software for it.
 
Panther. Mac OS X 10.3.9. You should get more RAM for the machine, though, because _any_ version of Mac OS X doesn't run that well with only 256 MB RAM - unless you're planning on only using TextEdit. ;) ... Also keep in mind that the machine should run OS 9.2.2 quite fine!
 
my brother has a similar power mac. get a 512mb ram stick for it, which should only be about $40, and then you're laughing.
 
First, I would say upgrade the RAM to 512 MB or greater. Then you could either go for Panther or Tiger. At this point with 10.5 eminent, you might be better served with Tiger. Many will complain about the Dashboard, but I haven't had any problems with it (of course, I'm running an iMac G5 so that doesn't count). Fortunately, there are applications out there that can kill Dashboard if you don't want it.
 
Tiger will run just fine as long as you don't use Dashboard. A friend of mine has a similar computer which he uses for software development.
 
I'd recommend 10.3 Panther. The key factor here is RAM. Panther is reasonably happy with 256MB. Tiger is not.

With Panther, 256 is the practical minimum and 512 is the "sweet spot". With Tiger, 512 is the practical minimum and 1GB is the sweet spot. At least, that's my experience. When I bought my Mac Mini, it only had 256MB. I found this perfectly usable until I upgraded to Tiger. Even without using Dashboard (which was simply not an option with 256MB), it clearly wanted more RAM than Panther.

There is no reason to go below 10.3, because it's simply better than 10.2 Jaguar, period.
 
Rule of Thumb: Run the newest OS which your hardware can handle. MacOS X 10.4 can run everything that MacOS X 10.3 can, but the reverse is not true. Everyone suggests that you upgrade your RAM. I concur. No one mentioned hard drive capacity. MacOS X may love RAM, but it is addicted to hard drive space. As a rock floor, you must have 10 GB HD but I recommend the largest hard drive you can get.
 
IceDigger

The very first thing you want to do is download the Firmware for this machine from Apple, HERE

If the machine doesn't have a system on it, you have to install OS 9 first, then run the Firmware updater 'BEFORE' trying to install OS X.

Personally, I would install 10.3 (Panther) on this machine.
 
here is my two cents on this, for what it maybe. I have a 450 Mhz x 2 G4 Power Mac to. I will tell you this much. I run 10.4.6 on my mac. with 1.5 GB of ram menumeters shows about 400 MB of my ram used at any given time. and I use Shack 4 alot. So if you are not going to run more then say 3 or 4 apps all at onec. then 512 of Ram is ok. 2nd I have two 40 GB hard drives. the first one is for the OS and apps I run. the 2nd one is for things that I download. The one that holds my OS and apps has only about 8 GB free so a 40 GB hard drive is the lowes hard drive to use. If you can get a 100 GB hard drive. Do so. 3th you will have to run that frimware update right off the bat to get OS X anything to run. 4th I would say use 10.4.6. It runs great. just one more thing try not to run Dashboard. Because I have seen just hitting F12 and loading Dashboard will make alot of swap files if you leave your system up and running. That's what I have found to work the best on this Power Mac that I have. But the last thing to remeber is not mater what you do, always have fun doing it. That's what makes a Mac a Mac not a PC. Because they just work and you can have fun doing it.
 
i have a 466 and run 10.4.6 on it , with dashboard, with no problems- i usually have ichat, msn messenger, safari, iphoto, itunes, mail, appleworks, the gimp, and graphic converter all open at the same time and it doesn't run slow enough for me to hurry on getting a cpu upgrade. i also have 1gig ram. so like all others, install os 9.1, make sure the firmware is up to date, up the ram to at least 512mb ( i say max it out ) and install tiger on a hard drive at least 60gig in size. the only other thing i suggest is to buy a mac usb2 card. 2 usb1 ports is no where enough for today's standards.
 
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