I do have an Intel, and *can* upgrade, but I *don't* want to spend $169 for it and get iWork/iLife which I will never use. If I can go to Snow Leopard without it costing me a bunch, I have no problem with that. It looks like Best Buy may have a $29 OS-only version...

I'm definitely smelling upsell fishiness, and it's making me strongly consider canceling my iPad order.

I suppose I should be thankful that my iBook G4 inability to upgrade to Snow Leopard is going to keep me from longing too hard and too long for an iPad. Really.

meara, it may violate the license agreement, but it will work fine. I think they lose all credibility in that argument by only offering it with iWork. If they sold a non-upgrade version plain (or iLife only, perhaps, as many people think that's part of the OS) for $99 or less, fine, but they don't do that. Not everybody needs iWork, and it's silly of them to imply that they do.

Buy the $29 one. Use it. Snow Leopard is actually pretty great, especially if you're still on Tiger.

Is there anyway to make Flash less crashy with Chrome? Or are they just not that compatible?

I need advice about making moving pictures.

In the best of all possible worlds (ie: one in which I had money), I'd like to have a set up where I can conduct interviews with good quality sound and picture for my people site. I have a Snowball mic, so I'm assuming that's covered.

I'd also like to do dog whispering videos for the doggy lama site.

In the lesser of all possible worlds, I need something I can do educational videos and skype with.

Should I go with a webcam or a camcorder? As I mentioned, money is every object at this point.

I saw a Logitech 9000 at Staples today for 69.99. It seems to get good reviews, but I have no basis for comparison.

What should I do!?

Also, are there good resources for refurbished or second hand cameras?

Much obliged for insights.

I'm definitely smelling upsell fishiness, and it's making me strongly consider canceling my iPad order.

Una, I have a hard time seeing this as some kind of update game. Tiger was released in 2005. It's now a 5 year old OS that has been through many updates. The most recent updates to that system were back in 2007 when it iterated up to 10.4.11. As it is Apple is supporting the iPad on Leopard back to 10.5.8, which is an OS released in 2007. There have been huge changes in the underlying structure of Quicktime and the media tools in OS X over this time period and I'm sure the versions of the software needed to work with this iPad leverage these changes.

I think what she's defining as "upsell fishiness" is the fact that Apple doesn't offer an OS-only disc that she (a Tiger user) is "allowed" to install. Instead, Apple, on their website, says, basically, that the only way she's allowed to install Snow Leopard is if she pays for a bundle that includes iLife and iWork.

The OS-only disc is billed as an "Upgrade from Leopard" entirely to convince folks like meara and Una that their only choice is to pay $169 for the bundle, which includes tons of software they may or may not need, OR purchase Leopard, install it, THEN install Snow Leopard.

Very tech-savvy users know that this is ridiculous (crippling an OS install disc by requiring ANOTHER disc from the older OS is actually rather dangerous, and Apple is not that stupid) but the wording on the site is distinctly misleading in that regard.

It's especially bad when you realize that Leopard was $129 at first release, and the Snow Leopard upgrade disc is $29, which means that if you were to buy Leopard new AND Snow Leopard new it would still cost less than the "You should really get this if you have Tiger, guys" bundle.

I like iWork and iLife. But I wouldn't want to pay for them if I didn't need them.

Yes, what Gris said. It was mostly the iWork/iLife bundle that was annoying me. (Also, I'll cop to thinking that the iPad was requiring the latest OS, but 5 ≠ 6. oops.)

So I can buy the $29 Snow Leopard and it will update from Tiger?

Also, since I may be about to upgrade, who makes good external drives?

I think the issue might be that the versions of the iLife apps that work on Tiger won't work on Snow Leopard. I'd check and make sure someone I know has been happy with the OS only upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard before doing it myself.

OK, yeah, that'd be bad, to upgrade and then not have my photos cause I can't open iphoto....except that's seriously the ONLY application that I use, that comes with iLife. Hrmph.