NIR the original poster, but I'm held back by hardware. 10.6 works great with even 2GB of RAM, whereas anything past that often grinds even with 4, and of course, being macs, upgrading memory on laptops is basically impossible.
The Apple laptops that could come with as little as 2GB of RAM used completely standard SO-DIMMs that could be replaced by removing just a few Philips-head screws; on most models, it's 3 screws under the battery. It's not even close to impossible.