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No. You can have earlier versions of the OS installed. (Or no OS installed: Snow Leopard will do a full, "clean" install.)

Following are the steps I took to upgrade from OS 10.4.11 (Tiger) to Snow Leopard. (Some people install Snow Leopard directly on top of their old OS. I prefer to use the following method.)

1) Do a clean install of Snow Leopard to a new partition. If necessary, clone your old OS partition to a temporary, bootable external hard drive.

2) All Snow Leopard disks can do a "Clean Install". But with the $29 disk you need to follow some extra steps, since "Erase and Install" is not part of the automatic installation... but the tools to do so are provided on the DVD.

Basically, when you put the Snow Leopard DVD into your Mac, you will be presented with two options: 1) to "Continue" with a standard upgrade, or, 2) go to "Utilities". Select the "Utilities" button (there will be a reboot in order to run from the DVD). In the new screen that appears, under the "Utilities" menu, select Disk Utilities to format your hard drive (or partition) that Snow Leopard is going on to. When you have finished formatting, QUIT from Disk Utilities, and the installer will then complete the installation of Snow Leopard. (Note: be prepared to wait several minutes when the system reboots during installation as it copies and sets up all the files.)

3) At some point during the installation, the installer will search all other partitions for an older OS, and if found, the installer will ask if you want to import the OS Settings, Files and/or Applications from that partition. Do this for a very smooth transition.

4) All my apps from OS 10.4 continued to work in Snow Leopard, but some of my printer drivers and scanner utility needed upgrades. Until I could find the upgrades, I was still able to Start Up from my OS 10.4 partition (press Option during start up) in order to use my printers and scanner in the meantime.

• Answered by Ewald W from Vancouve
• 05 18, 12
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That's true.

There are other options, but its pretty tedious, and unless you know a Mac guru who would do the work for free, probably pretty expensive.

Earlier Apple hardware configurations (think PowerPC) supported "Classic" (essentially OS 9) running under OS X. If you know someone who has an older Mac, or if you are willing to buy one used, it may be possible to bring those files forward. The process requires some technical savvy, and you should be able to search the Internet for a description of the process.

The other part of the answer is upgrading the files themselves. In many cases, the program you were creating and using the files with under OS 9 will no longer be available. Or, as in the case of Quark Xpress and some Aldus/Adobe files for example, the old file format is completely foreign to the latest version of the software. This means -- for these files -- you will need to track down an older version (perhaps several versions) of the software, and make progressive upgrades to bring the files current.

Also, there may be conversion software available which performs this file update in a single step.

You may want to search the Internet for suggestions regarding your specific software, and begin asking around among computer professionals in your area for recommendations. Most communities have a Mac User Group which would be a great place to start.

• Answered by Bret G from Topeka
• 06 6, 12
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Yes the i5 will be more than enough for you. MORE THAN ENOUGH.

• Answered by Fadil K from Chino Hills
• 01 15, 12
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