Mac chica needs help

[Phaedrus]

Hey guys,

got a question.

There's this cute little girl I met who uses a Mac at work. She tried to switch to osX a couple months ago, and it didn't work for her. Even in 9.2 her system crashes all the time. I told her I knew where she might get some advice. I can't help her because I don't do the kind of work she does--but I know a lot of you guys do. If you post responses I'll send her a link to this thread. You'd be helping out a very cute Mac chica.

OK, to the problem. She thinks maybe her hardware is not up to the task. She crashes a lot and her rendering times are abyssmal. Here's the details:

programs she primarily uses:

Adobe Illustrator
Strata 3D pro
Photoshop
Freehand
Vector Works

and a ton of side applications, including:
Acrobat Reader
a browser
Office 2001
Appleworks
etc., etc.

Her computer is a blue-and-white G3 with 320 MB RAM and a 36 GB hard drive.

She currently runs OS 9.2.

Would more RAM help? How much faster would her software run on an Altivec-equipped G4? Given the software she's running, should she try osX again?

Mucho gracias

[Rower_CPU]

It's probably a hardware problem.

One of my coworkers has a Blue-n-White that crashes consistently in 9.2, and would kernel panic regularly in X. He's got 512 of RAM, and a 20 G hard drive. He had some hard drive problems in the past, so it might be the drive screwing things up.

Sound familiar?

[blindman858]

i am not an expert but i can take a stab. I really do think she should switch to os x. Better in many many ways she will be a lot happier. she uses applications that require a lot a lot of memory. Try getting her up to 512mb. This is probably the problem. Also their may be extension conflicts she needs to catch. This is what i would do.

[arn]

Originally posted by Phaedrus

OK, to the problem. She thinks maybe her hardware is not up to the task. She crashes a lot and her rendering times are abyssmal. Here's the details:


If you get crashes in Mac OS X... then a big possbility is faulty ram. Pull all 3rd party ram, and try again...

if it fixes the problem, that may be it.

arn

[AlphaTech]

I agree with the RAM suggestion... Get all PC100 222 spec memory and give that a try. I would also recommend going to at least 512MB, or not 1GB (max that the blue and white systems can accept).

Has anyone run any kind of utilities on the system lately (past 6 months)? If not, then I would recommend at least running Norton Utilities (very latest version). Also, run the software update control panel and install any updates that make sense.

[Choppaface]

try reinstalling the software and stuff. its really worth it. and its a G3 so I'd suggest not going to X. I have X on my g3 laptop here (400mhz) and its pretty depressing.....ya more RAM would rock too

[mac_airport]

you state:

'...a big possbility is faulty ram. Pull all 3rd party ram, and try again... '

why is '3rd party ram' a likely source of the problem?...forgive my ignorance...thanks in advance for any help you can give...

[bassist]

This link may start her on her way to finding out the problem:
http://macos.about.com/library/weekly/aa021400a.htm it is a list of the keyboard shortcuts for Macs. Also she should not open alot of programs at the same time as OS X uses 128mgs ram for itself and the rest gets used by the running program(s).
This link also may help: http://www.apple.com/macosx/gettingtoknow/
and this link
http://www.info.apple.com/usen/g3/
:D

[Durandal7]

Sadly, my B&W G3 recently had this same problem. It took me months of tinkering with it but eventually I fixed it. The problem was bad RAM. It was exactly the same problem you described, I even run a few of the programs you mentioned (Strata,Illustrator). Anyway taking out all my RAM modules and putting in a new one fixed the problem. I guess that was why I found the computer in a pawn shop for $150.

[Spock]

It may also be a power problem my old iMac used to lock up when my fridge kicked on, try using a UPS.