Upgrade Questions, power and software dilemma Options

[midiwife]

Dear all,

Apologies as this post straddles a few forums so I'll post it here.

I am thinking about upgrading a studio of teaching macs.

Present systems feature:

G4 Powermac 733MHz 768Mb RAM
OS 10.2.6
Sound hardware Digidesign Audiomedia lll card
Music software: Cubase SX 1.06, ProTools LE 6.1, Reason 2.5, Ableton Live 2.1, Sibelius 2

Upgrade options:

1) U/g SX 1.06 to SX 2
Problem: Our processors may be a bit underpowered for SX2.
Anyone tried using SX2 on this spec of machine?
Have you tried it on 10.2.6 (min spec on Steinberg site states 10.2.5!)

2) U/g OS to Panther 10.3.3 and u/g SX to 2
Problem: Our audiomedia lll cards not officially supported - certainly not for Protools LE 6.4 which would run under Panther (we could u/g PTLE for free)

3) U/g audiomedialll cards to Mboxes.
Problem: is there any known issue between Mboxes and Cubase SX 2 under either Jaguar 10.2.6 or, if we go for it, Panther 10.3.3

Basically, we'll need to get new macs in a year or so but till then, there's no replacement budget available.
As this is a college, we need to ensure that we offer current versions of software, particularly Cubase which attracts most students.
My main concern is what is likely to happen running SX 2 on our machines so any experiences would be gratefully received.
I should add that we won't be necessarily pushing the program to extremes.

Many thanks

Music Tech Co-ordinator
The City Lit
London