I realize that. I, am a private individual with no job, just want it to last as long as it can because I probably can't afford another one anytime soon. That being said, I do see your point. I don't expect it to last forever, I just wish it did (admittedly, that statement wasn't very well worded).
My point, exactly.
No, probably not. But other things, such as the CPUs and RAM, could make a difference.
So far, I have upgraded the hard disks from a single 320 GB stock drive to two 1 TB drives, a 500 GB drive and a 30 GB SSD. The RAM has remained a constant 4 GB so far, but I intend to upgrade it to at least 8 GB in the near future. And as for the PCI express slots, I'd love to get a USB 3 card (or two) in there, but I haven't seen any that will work on a Mac.
Yes, it will. I have a working copy of it installed so that I can format Zip disks in a format a classic Mac will understand (and despite being on an Intel machine, it lets me install Mac OS 9 drivers on said Zip disks. I haven't been able to do this with 10.6, 10.7 or 10.8 (maybe 10.5 could do it, but I haven't tried). I've also noticed that, even though it isn't the most modern OS in the world, it can run somewhat faster than subsequent versions could, even on the same hardware (in this case, a 2008, 8-core Mac Pro with 4 GB RAM). Fortunately, for the foreseeable future, I don't have any needs that can't be met by 10.4 (except maybe Flash video >
).I am well aware of all the things you said in your post, and perhaps I didn't word mine very well, but basically I am in agreement with you.
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