Originally Posted By: tanstaafl.
So, then, I can use the 10.5.6 "Leopard" disk to nuke and repave it, right?

Insert the disk, power up while holding the "C" key, and follow the directions on-screen. Is that all there is to it, or are there "gotchas" I need to watch out for?

The one gotcha is that OS X discs like to preserve user data. For the Leopard Installer, look for an option titled "Erase and Install", on a screen that looks like this

That will format the hard drive, then do a completely clean install.

Originally Posted By: tanstaafl.
Would it be worth my while (or even possible?) to update to 10.5.8 after the repaving?

10.5.8 is a free upgrade that comes from the Software Update menu entry in the Apple menu. With the version scheme of 10.x.y, all .y updates are always free. They are sorta an equivalent to the Windows service packs, just much more frequent. Microsoft deploys hundreds of one issue hot fixes, Apple tends to batch a few up as a .y update every few months.

I honestly have to question the usability of the iMac though even after a clean reload. Flash will still perform badly and will not be a new version, as Adobe stopped any PowerPC development ages ago. Most apps on the Mac these days have dropped support for both OS X 10.5 and PowerPC. Looking back at the first post, I doubt it was a junk ware issue.

Since it is 10.5, it has a program called Front Row on it, which was more of a TV style media interface. If you buy (or have lying around as it was bundled sometimes) an Apple Remote, you could use the machine for media playback. It should still be able to run a recent enough version of iTunes to receive content shared from your wife's other Mac. The interface looks like this:



Without the remote, you can call it up by pressing Cmd-Escape, then using the arrow keys, enter and space to navigate.

Originally Posted By: tanstaafl.
Originally Posted By: drakino
Print Screen functions do exist in OS X,
I had to chuckle at that link, clearly written by an Apple fanboy: "Command+Control+Shift+4, then space, then click a window"

It's so simple, all you have to do is hold down four keys simultaneously, then hit the space bar and click on your screen, as opposed to the absurd complexity of pressing the "Print Screen" button on a Windows machine.

It is one of my "what were they thinking" moments with OS X. The screen capture commands are really handy, but a four key press chord is weird. In the past I would reassign it to one of the F16-F19 keys, or launch the Grab program. For about the past 3 years (out of my now decade long Mac usage) I finally remember and use the defaults.