OS 9.1 is really all you need to be running on a Mac that doesn't have OSX installed. the 9.2 upgrade is mostly adding the stuff that has the hooks for Classic to run under OSX.
I note that the author of OS9 Helper claims better Finder operation with 9.2. Did you see the improvement? There didn't seem to be much noticeable improvement under OSX with Classic.
It’s snappier, and I’d been having weird out-of-memory problems lately. It’s been fine all day today. Had to reset some prefs; not a biggie, but the Finder “Preferences” menu item has a way to change the display of icons (on the desktop as well as all folders) to a loose, tighter, tightest config, and I always seem to have to redo that when I install upgrades. :’) Not a biggie.
The closet Mac geek at one of the Best Buys told me that the PPC versions of OS X didn’t really get great until after the switch to Intel; most of the remaining annoying problems he’d had on his G5 stopped with update after the first Intel version came out. :’) I’ve found that (besides not liking the X desktop, stupid changes to key assignments) X is a bit pokey on any machine where I’ve run Classic also, by comparison.
The temptation to grab a big screen Intel iMac is very great though — if I had the cash, I’d probably make the jump. Before I do that, though, I’ll probably get a big, cheap, 1080p flat screen, and an HDMI adapter video card for one or both of these boxes (I inherited a G4 tower, which I think is all-X all the time).
Oh, and the out of memory problems *may* be traceable to the fact that the tiny original boot drive — 1.19 GB (SCSI I believe) — was nearly full, and I had to clear out a few hundred megs. It was pretty simple, first I backed up the System Folder and some other stuff, prior to attempting the install, as recommended. Then the first attempt blew up, because there was only 117K left (blush). So I then just dragged the entire boot drive over into the 18gb SCSI outboard, and restored the System Folder from the CD (just in case, probably it wasn’t necessary as it turned out), and dropped a few big folders into the Trash, and Emptied. As generally is the case, “I” did the modification to the .smi files, and ran the installations, while watching TV in another part of the house. ;’)
Dude, I’m not gettin’ a Dell. ;’)