Leopard system requirements

If you're reading TUAW (which you're doing right now!) then I suspect there are one or two things amongst the 300+ new features in Leopard that have whetted your appetite. Don't pre-order just yet though, because you have to make sure that your Mac can handle all that Leopardy goodness.

Here are the minimum specs your Mac will need to run Leopard, according to Apple:

• Intel, G5, or 867MHz+ G4 processor

• 512 megs of RAM (though if you only have 512 megs of RAM you should get some more. Trust me, I'm a pundit)

• DVD drive (Leopard is shipping on a DVD, and your Mac needs to read it to be able to install it)

• 9GB of free disk space (though I bet if you customize the install and leave out all those printer drivers and extra languages you can save lots of space)

In addition some features have further requirements:

• Time Machine requires a hard drive in addition to your boot disk (external or internal is fine, I would imagine)

• Photo Booth requires a camera of some kind (shocking!) and a processor better than a G4. If you want to do those wacky backdrop effects you'll need an Intel Core Duo or faster

• Screensharing requires a speeding net connection (300 Kbps is Apple's recommendation)

• DVD player requires a 1.6GHz or better proc for super cool de-interlacing (I hate interlacing!)

As you might expect, Leopard will work better on newer Macs, but older Macs aren't left out in the cold. A shiny nickel to the first person who gets Leopard to boot on a G3 iMac!