Do I need Snow Leopard to download Lion?

Partitioning is described here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61301

Under most circumstances you either will have to erase your drive, and/or at minimum backup your data first*:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

Given that disks are dirt cheap (we just bought a 320 GB 2.5 inch drive at the Staples for $70 this morning), I would forget learning how to partition and instead just buy a new external disk and use carbon copy cloner or super-duper to make a bootable clone for your drive.

Once you get to 10.6 (or 10.5 if for some reason you stop there), you will want to ditch the "smart" backup software and repurpose your MyBook Essential to be your TimeMachine backup. Save the new disk that you just bought, that has your clone of your 10.4 system on it, for awhile.

Besides running TimeMachine, you should also have one or two other disks, the same size as your internal disk, doesn't need to be fast or slim or sleek or bigger than the computer disk, and make occasional clones of your system. This way you have 3 copies of your data -- on the disk, on the TM backup, and, if all else fails, a recent clone.

You can also wait for the USB thumb drive from Apple later in August.

You can do it without having Snow Leopard but its a bit of a pain.

http://www.macworld.com/article/161087/2011/07/install_lion_over_leopard.html

Brody, thanks for the warning about broadband speed, since that's probably a deal-breaker for me. I'm guessing that if I go into an Apple store, they could help me out.

Mary