Leopard Upgrade, ILife 09 Install On A PowerPC G4

Question

Hi.
I have a PowerPC G4 1.25 GHz Mac Mini. with 1 GB DDR SDRAM. The internal HD is 40 GB with only 9.5 GB still free. It is up to date, running 10.4.11 currently.
I bought the Mac Box Set (Leopard, iLife 09 and iWork 09). What I am thinking of doing is to do a clean install by erasing and installing Leopard. (This Mac Mini originally came with panther and was upgraded to Tiger. Seemed like a good idea to clear the cruft with an erase and install.)
The specs and user comments suggests that this should work fine. Is there anything I need to know or do before I do the erase and install?
Everything is backed up, so that is taken care of.
After installing Leopard, I would like to install the iLife 09. Will this be okay? Will the iLife 09 install on a PowerPC mac? Looking at the specs, iMovie 09 and Garageband 09 seem to require an intel processor. Does this mean that these two apps will not install on my powerPC Mac Mini from the iLife dvd? Or, will they install but be sort of stripped down, perhaps missing some of their features.
What problems, if any, do you foresee in this? Is there anything that I need to know before starting? Any advice, including a walk through description would be really, really appreciated. Thanks so much.

Answer 1

Woodland Potter wrote:
Oh... but look at the prices for internal Hard Drives! Hmm... could replace the 40 Gig internal with a new, larger one. Wonder if that would that be worth it. What do you think? Is there anything to be aware of in replacing the internal Hard Drive?
Assuming you plan on keeping the "old" Mini around for a while, a new hard drive is not a bad idea. Not only will you get a lot more space for files, you will probably see a noticeable improvement in responsiveness, especially if you get a 7200 rpm model. This is because a newer drive will almost certainly have inherently better performance characteristics than the original (lower average seek time, a larger cache & improved caching algorithms, etc.) and because the same amount of file data can be concentrated into a smaller physical area of the drive, reducing the number of track seeks the drive has to perform. A side benefit is that the new drive may even use less energy that the older, smaller one & thus your Mini will run cooler.
This will not make the old soldier comparable to a newer Mac with a faster architecture, but it is likely to result in noticeably if not dramatically faster boot times & application launches, shorter waits while the "spinning beach ball" is displayed, & quicker switches between running applications -- basically anything that requires reading from or writing to the drive.
Things to be aware of include making sure you get a drive with the right interface: you do not want a Serial ATA interface (often referred to as "SATA") but the older Ultra ATA kind (now often referred to as "PATA," for parallel ATA). Almost any new PATA drive will be either ATA-6 (also called ATA/100) or ATA-7 (also called ATA/133). Either one is a good choice. ATA-7 is potentially faster but the Mini's controller may not support it. If so, it will operate at the fastest ATA level it supports. Avoid ATA-5 (also called ATA/66) because the drive will be older & less apt to have the latest performance improvements.
If possible, get the specs for the original drive & make sure the power requirements for the new one are lower. They probably will be because lower energy consumption has become increasingly important over the last few years, but it never hurts to check.
I assume from the "putty knife" comment that you are familiar with opening the Mini & any reassembly steps necessary to restore its heat sinking ability to factory standards. If not, either learn about them or don't try this mod.
Also remember that you could just add an external drive instead, but if you like DIY projects or the idea of retaining the one-box form factor, this is a viable alternative.