OS and Software > All Things Macintosh > how do I buy old iLife cheaply?

said by DonLibes:

I use smugmug.com which is telling me that I have to get a newer version of iPhoto. Evidently, iPhoto 5 (from 2005) does not support metadata properly.

Okay, I appreciate that it may be time to upgrade; However, there are many versions of iLife - which one to upgrade to?

I can't see any benefit in upgrading to iLife '09. First, the whole suite says my hardware is too lame. (I've got a dual 1.8 G5; iLife 9.0 requirements are for a dual 2.0 or greater.) But even if it works, I don't need the "new and improved" iMovie (everyone says the old iMovie HD is better), the new GarageBand (just a vehicle to sell music lessons?), etc.

As far as I can tell, iLife '06 seems like the sweet spot although it seems weird to "upgrade" to something that's 3 years old. On top of that, the 3-year old iLife is very expensive. The cheapest price on Amazon is $94+shipping and that's for a used copy! On ebay, copies are going for $40+shipping after having to go through the inconvenient bidding process. Is there a cheaper legal solution to getting iPhoto 06 or buying 3 year old copies of iLife at these ridiculous prices?

Just out of curiosity, will iLife '09 even work on my machine or does the software contain a "feature" that would prevent it from running? (My experience is not reassuring - for example, Photo Booth disables the background image feature because it deems my G5 to be too slow.)

said by DonLibes:

Just out of curiosity, will iLife '09 even work on my machine or does the software contain a "feature" that would prevent it from running? (My experience is not reassuring - for example, Photo Booth disables the background image feature because it deems my G5 to be too slow.)

said by LBDSL:

Everything will work with the exception of iMovie, which does need a faster chip.

You are better off just buying the newest version from apple, unless you find a real go deal on ebay for an earlier version.