Thread: Upgrading a Mac Powerbook G4

ram is the only option that will help speed on that unit.

and the increase will be about 10-12% at most

if you need a BIG increase in speed it's buy a new one time...

I'd have thought that RAM would make a really quite noticeable difference on that system actually. I had a powerbook G4 for a while and it ran perfectly happily once i threw 2Gb of RAM at it.

OSX is complete memory hog so if she's only using it for web access over wireless and general non intensive stuff i would have thought it would zip along quite happily if you bump it up to the max it will take which on that model is 1.12Gb.

128Mb is built in on board so you can only add a single 1Gb module (PC2100 speed) onto it. The hard drive will also be a slow 5400rpm model so upgrading this to a 7200rpm one would make a bit of a difference, but not not a huge one so not likely to be worth the trouble.

I'd be tempted to get a 1Gb module in there and see how it goes before upgrading the whole thing, especially since memory is dirt cheap nowadays.

Originally Posted by p38arover

My wife currently uses a Mac Powerbook G4.

An eye for quality I see.

Originally Posted by p38arover

Now, she complains it is slow and wants to upgrade the Mac to the latest Dual Core system. Noting she always uses the 'Net via wireless, I'm not sure it will help. It will improve boot up speed.

I had one of those until the beginning of this year. The new Mac Book Pro is far faster. The one downside is that it doesn't have an s-video output (I used to use the old one for playing movie files on the tellie via the video).

Moving to the Intel chipset is a major step in the right direction. Apple is phasing out PPC support, albeit slowly. It would also be a good move to upgrade to OSX 10.5. This system version provides many improvements over the previous ones.

Originally Posted by p38arover

What else can I do to improve the G4's speed? Will upgrading the onboard memory from 256 MB help? It does on Windows machines. How far gan it be increased? 512 MB? 1 GB? More?

Is it worth changing the HDD noting there is 36 GB free on the existing?

Upgrading the RAM will significantly improve speed and performance. IIRC it will take up to 4Gb.

There is not a lot of point in changing HDDs. Laptop HDDs are more expensive than normal ones. There is also the risk that in fiddling around with the system's internals you will void the warranty. Apple has a lifetime warranty on parts. If the parts fail, they will replace them, although conditions apply.

The cost and hassle for transferring data over to a new one, you may as go for a new one and sell this one off. They are still worth money. Getting a new Mac is as easy as pie. When you boot it up for the first time it asks if you have another Mac you want to move every over from. You connect them, say via ethernet, and leave them to tango while you have dinner. When you come back the new one has all the toys that were on the old, plus all those important family photos.

done dozens of em and 12% is the best increase i have seen....

Fair enough, i don't have any point of reference for what 12% actually equates to in terms of usability but when i bumped my old one from 512Mb to 2Gb it went from being noticably sluggish and not overly pleasant to use to being responsive and perfectly good to use for general browsing, email, etc which was all that was required of it.

Depends on what she wants to use it for really, personally I hate this obcesion with having the latest and greatest and having to have dual core this and 8gb that just because it's possible and the newest shinyest thing around for the next 5 mins.

If all it's needed for is web browsing and general desktop use even though the new one will be several hundred % faster on paper and in the benchmark tests, personally i wouldn't think that a $3000 brand new one would actually feel $2950 faster than throwing a $50 RAM upgrade into a perfectly usable, if dated machine that's only used for surfing the web.

OK, in the short term, can I swap RAM from my laptop to hers.

According to RamCity, mine uses

Kingston 512MB 200-pin SO-DIMM
Speed: DDR-333 / PC2700
Part No: KTH-ZD7000/512

Hers would use:

Kingston 512MB 200-pin SO-DIMM
Speed: DDR-333 / PC2700
Part No: KTA-PBG4333/512


The type numbers are different even though both are 200-pin SO-DIMM, Speed: DDR-333 / PC2700 - Does that matter?

It's a match. Kingston give different part numbers for the same stuff to different manufacturer's machines.

Macs are sometimes picky about the quality of the RAM put into them, but it's usually a case of try it out, and if the RAM doesn't show up you take it out again.

Simon

Thanks Simon, I'll give it a go.

Do you drink red wine?

Ron