see ? thats what i meanVista won't even boot with 128
There's not a lot in Tiger to use extra memory than Panther apart from Dashboard, which you should definitely disable completely (Panther and Tiger are pretty similar otherwise). 10.2 and below do use less memory, but are much slower anyway and very short on compatibility with modern software.
seriously though i used xp in 128 mb it was awfull
and i used tiger on a mini with 256 it ran but not entirley satisfactionairy
i tend to advocate jaguar for older macs because of its lower requirements ( it runs in 64 mb ...just )
and a lot of aplications stil run in jaguar
its not quite obsolete only barley