Installing Leopard OS X on the G4 1 Ghz eMac (1 Gig of RAM) went a little slower than the 24 inch iMac. Before installing, I repaired permissions, rebooted into single user mode (Apple S), and ran fsck -fy.
Some people actually think that running the disk utility from the CD (while booted from the CD) is better than fsck. I have read, that some belive if you run from an external disk, the disk first aid can fix "the whole disk", whereas, they believe, fsck, cannot. Wrong.
Sometimes, your machine may not boot from the CD. Fsck should be standard operating procedure.
The eMac rebooted into the Leopard install, and told me it would take 2 hours and 53 minutes. After checking at the one hour mark, it said that it had 18 minutes left. When it said that there was one minute remaining, it took about 15 minutes more. You can open an active log window during the installation and see that there is activity.
Only one major annoyance. Gmail status, although updated to 1.08, does not work on any of my Macs. It is there in the menu, but is invisible. Quickbooks Pro 5 still works fine, which is another older application I use. CNN flash video is still jittery on the eMac for some reason, but works fine on every other site.
Leopard also installed without a hitch on the G4 1.42 Ghz iBook which currently has 512 MB of RAM, and my 24 inch 2.16 Ghz iMac with 2 GB of RAM. Leopard on the iMac now launches Safari and Textedit in one bounce. This is 3 or 4 times faster than before.
Flock, my preferred Web 2.0 browser is also faster. It gives me instant access to my Flickr, YouTube and Blogger accounts and allows drag and drop between any two. Probably the best browser that no one knows about. Also the most Mac like. Even Safari 3 now looks like its Windows counterpart.
Overall, Leopard is a winner. Very fast. The only disappointment is Time Machine. I thought it would make a bootable backup and it does not. I will stick with Carbon Copy Cloner and maintain a full, bootable backup. Everyone should do this. No sympathy if you do not back up.
Technorati Tags: , leopard, imac, emac, g4, ibook, install, ram, fsck, apple, os, x
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9 comments:
I came across this blog post while searching whether Leopard works on emacs or not. My parents have an emac that I'm trying to update so I went to the Apple store and talked to them. My emac has all the right specs, but they scared me a little bit and told me it still might not work because (obviously) the emac is pretty old. I don't want to drop a couple hundred bucks just to have it not work. Apparently, according to this blog, it worked for you? Any updated info (still works, runs slow, any bugs, etc)?
Anything more you could share would be GREATLY appreciated.
-Rachel
Rachel, my wifes eMac is a 1 Ghz ATI Radeon eMac with 1 Gig of Ram, the hard drive was updated to 300 Gigs and the Superdrive was updated to a dual layer burner. Those upgrades aside, the machine is still basically a 1 Ghz machine. The latest 10.5.2 update made things faster, and the graphics driver update went without a hitch. Flash video on CNN is much faster (was jittery, unlike YouTube). Everything runs great and it is quicker than Tiger.
I do believe the extra RAM makes a difference. Maxing out to 1 Gig will make a difference. Feel free to Email me with any other questions.
Hey Carl,
How does the emac handle the added features in Leopard?
Do all the graphical features work.. like "Spaces", etc???
Yes, features like Spaces work. Here is an update though. Since first publishing this post, the CRT began to "snap" every once in awhile, signalling an imminent video failure. My wife bought a 20 inch iMac to replace it, and the eMac has been relegated to the basement.
Howdy Carl,
I know this is an ancient post, and that the eMac has been retired, but I was curious: just how well did QuickBooks Pro 5 run under Leopard? I have a client who has an old G4 running 10.3.9 that is capable of running Leopard, but she must be able to run QuickBooks Pro 5. Did QB ever exhibit any weird behavior?
Joe, QB 5 works fine under Leopard. My wife still uses it on her new Intel iMac, and it ran fine on the eMac.
Hi Carl, thanks for your time. Do you think it could work with the latest Leopard 10.5.7?
I want to do it with an external DVD drive. It could be any problem with this?
Thanks!!
Iván
Mine will not instail.
Make sure it is 10.5
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