Panther and Tiger and other issues

Question

deep breath...this is going to be long and detailed, but I am hoping someone here can help me since AppleCare has not been able to figure it out and I am at a loss now. I have been in the iPhoto forum but apparently the problem is much larger than one app.
We have a iBookG4, purchased from a Mac Store in Sept. 2004. It has been to AppleCare 4 times for various problems and 2 hard drive crashes that we have had to do reinstalls ourselves here at home, the most recent repair this past week. When we got it back Wednesday, it only had Panther loaded--we had been running Tiger for over a year--frustrating, but OK, as I had the orginal Tiger disk so I re-installed it. Proceeded to hook up our external and began loading all the pics and music back on the laptop. It would not open our photos, saying we needed to use the newer version of iPhoto. We had been using iPhoto 5.0.4 since March 06. As I looked further Garage Band and iDVD were also missing completely, which we previously had, and I am sure there are others, I just noticed these two since I use them the most.
So I start all over: reinstall Panther, do the Software Updates, then reinstall Tiger, do the Software Updates, twice in the past two days. I also downwload the iPhoto updates from the Apple site, but they do not recognize the iPhoto 4 as valid to update from. I called AppleCare today and after several tries at various things, he asks me to do exactly as I have done twice already. I humor him and do it, of course it doesn't work.
When Tiger is loaded, I am still missing GarageBand, iDVD, iWork and the iCal icon is there but whe I open it is is not recognized. We had all of these apps working fine before it was sent in for service last week.
Now the questions:
1. There are 2 Software Install and Restore disks that came with our laptop, but it never asks for the second disk to be loaded--it only loads one disk. When I put in the second disk, it only has the Using this disk.pdf in several languages on it. Shouldn't it ask for the 2nd disk and is that probably where the Garage Band and iDVD are?
2. Why would the install disks not reload all the applications as we had them orginally, or is this related to Question #1 and there is something wrong with those disks?
2. I saved our entire hard drive to the external--did that not include the applications, therefore our iPhoto 5 is lost?
4. Is there any recourse with AppleCare, in that I know to save my files but would expect they would return it with at least the same operating system as when I sent it in?
I know you are going to ask this: I have no idea how iPhoto was loaded onto our computer. I did not buy iLife 5 or 6 (iLife 4 came with our original laptop purchase), but one day I was loading pictures and it just appeared that way--I always assumed it came through as one of the Software Updates I run every night. But I know it was March 06, because the video I took in February would not load onto iPhoto (had to use the software that came with the camera), but the ones I took April 1st did load onto iPhoto. The only other way I thought was that AppleCare loaded it, but it was in for service in November 05 and mid-April 06, nowhere near the time I noticed it being on the laptop.
Any advice?

Answer 1

1. There are 2 Software Install and Restore disks
that came with our laptop, but it never asks for the
second disk to be loaded--it only loads one disk.
When I put in the second disk, it only has the Using
this disk.pdf in several languages on it. Shouldn't
it ask for the 2nd disk and is that probably where
the Garage Band and iDVD are?
Often there are disks with software to be installed after OSX is installed. You don't use these disks during the install process, but after you boot OSX. Have you read the "Using this disk.pdf" file? If Garage Band and iDVD are on that disk they would be the versions shipped with the computer, not the most recent versions.
2. Why would the install disks not reload all the
applications as we had them orginally, or is this
related to Question #1 and there is something wrong
with those disks?
Some systems were shipped with two sets of disks, a restore set that restores everything that was shipped on the computer's hard drive, and an install set for just OSX. The OSX disk would be used for Disk Utility and password resetting.
3. I saved our entire hard drive to the
external--did that not include the applications,
therefore our iPhoto 5 is lost?
It depends on how you did the save.
4. Is there any recourse with AppleCare, in that I
know to save my files but would expect they would
return it with at least the same operating system as
when I sent it in?
If they had to replace the hard drive, installing the operating system that was shipped with the computer is not unreasonable. Installing the latest version could cause problems for some customers with older software, and not all customers have paid for later versions
I know you are going to ask this: I have no idea how
iPhoto was loaded onto our computer. I did not buy
iLife 5 or 6 (iLife 4 came with our original laptop
purchase), but one day I was loading pictures and it
just appeared that way--I always assumed it came
through as one of the Software Updates I run every
night. But I know it was March 06, because the video
I took in February would not load onto iPhoto (had to
use the software that came with the camera), but the
ones I took April 1st did load onto iPhoto. The only
other way I thought was that AppleCare loaded it, but
it was in for service in November 05 and mid-April
06, nowhere near the time I noticed it being on the
laptop.
There are no free or automatic updates to newer versions of iLife. If your computer came with iLife 4 you have to buy iLife 6.