[G4] Question on upgrade for Mac G5

[Jim Scott]

On Oct 11, 2013, at 11:12 AM, Dan Behringer <dpbehringer21 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this. But please settle what I think is an obvious answer to this question -- will upgrading a Mac G4 or G5 for that matter to OS 10.5.8 "make it run faster"?
> _______________________________________________

The short answer is no. The longer short answer is that the minimum RAM requirement for OS X 10.5.x is roughly twice that required for OS X 10.4.x. So if you're running OS X 10.4.x and upgrade to OS X 10.5.x, you will need at minimum 512 MB RAM, which will let 10.5 run slower than 10.4. 1 GB of RAM will let 10.5 run about as fast as 10.4, and even more RAM will "make it run faster," but since 10.5 has more "overhead" than 10.4, you won't notice much of a speed improvement vs. 10.4 on the same machine.

What 10.5 WILL do is extend the life of your G4 or G5 a little longer as far as using the Internet is concerned. Even then, it's not going to be long before 10.5 web browsing will become unsatisfactory as web site requirements continue to surpass the ability of G4 and G5 machines as well as the web browsers that will run on 10.5. 

Intel Macs have been around for almost 8 years now, so it's time to start looking for an Intel Mac and move at least into the OS X 10.6 world, which will let you run older PPC software via Rosetta as well as a more modern web browser. 

Jim Scott