Am looking to pick up a basic second hand Mac from the bay, most of which ship with Tiger as standard. However, my preference is to go for Leopard (or SL), and some of these machines have been upgraded, but the owners have either lost the discs, want to keep the license for themselves, blah blah. So … is there a simple website that explains how OS X licenses work? Have googled but found loads of irrelevant or overly technical stuff.

Cheers
SM

dont need one for mac os's. Just install from the disc, no serial required

You can buy Snow Leopard for £22 from Amazon – not really worth worrying about at that price, if you can get a machine which will run it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mac-Snow-Leopard-10-6-DVD/dp/B001AMHWP8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1273076055&sr=8-1

Strictly speaking someone (you, or them) will not be using a legally licensed version of the OS.

Practically speaking, if something goes wrong and you need to reinstall, you'll be buggered and need to buy a new copy of the OS or pirate it off someone else.

If you're looking at old macs, make sure you don't buy a G4 one (or a G3 laptop), only the Intel ones are worth having.

Joe

dont need one for mac os's. Just install from the disc, no serial required

Ok. So let's say one person has upgraded Tiger to SL (under family pack license), but cannot pass the SL license on because it belongs to their household, but is still looking to sell it with SL installed because they've lost the Tiger discs. How does that work out for me in terms of licenses/discs i need to buy?

Cheers

BTW, it's going to be an Intel even though I just want to use it to experiement with. Naturally I want to be sure I'm covered by the right license, and don't mind buying the relevant discs.

E.g. if I buy the aforementioned machine, I don't mind buying the SL discs, but will I have to buy the upgrade as well? I guess they have the right as seller to keep the license for themselves if they have a replacement running SL?

IME licensing is something that Apple are nowhere near as hot on as Microsoft. I've installed the same install of their OS on numerous machines. As Jammy111 says there is no serial no needed for Mac OS installs.

Spacemonkey i really wouldnt worry yourself about it. All you need to buy is this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mac-Snow-Leopard-10-6-DVD/dp/B001AMHWP8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1273076055&sr=8-1

in real life you'll not have a problem. Mac OS X does not need wacky authorization codes. However, you'll not have a legal copy of the OS. And if you don't have a disc the folks are right: If you need to reinstall or roll back your install you have a real problem. And like they also say it is easily solved by either buying a copy of OS X SL or borrowing a copy from a friend. And you can use time machine to keep a neat back up of your full disc that is really handy for finding those things you deleted but did not really mean to. And you can use the time machine back up to restore a working set up if your disc should die.

Sounds a whole lot simpler than Windows. I know what to look for now.

Thanks all

If you install Snow Leopard I don't think imovie, iphoto or the rest of ilife from ilife05 will reinstall on SL.

gee, I've installed the sl update on my sisters macbook, and the ilife programs (maybe 06 not 05 though) worked fine!