Powerbook g4 battery

I don't know about the battery fix, but go into System Preferences, Accounts (or Users), and see what, if any, login items are set to run when the Mac starts up. Select and delete any you don't need. It's possible the previous owner had several things launching at startup.

But it could also be a failing hard drive.

To make sure the hard drive is healthy, go to Utilities, Disk Utility, and click on your Macintosh HD on the left, then click on Verify Disk. Do the same for Verify Permissions. If it finds any errors/problems, use the Repair function.

If all of that doesn't fix your problems, a fresh reinstall of the OS should can't hurt.

SCIENTIST29 said:

I forgot to mention that the battery doesn't hold more than ten minutes and displays over 400 cycles...

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Sounds like it's near dead to me.

Mine displays 172 cycles. It holds ~40-60 minutes without being connected to the Net.

SCIENTIST29 said:

Also the powerbook is terribly slow- scrolling is permanently choppy, loading a web page takes much longer than on my Emac 1,25ghz. Could this be due to small RAM (512mb)? Could reinstalling OS help?? Thanks
Jan

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You don't mention what operating system you are using. If you're running Leopard, the small RAM could easily be the cause.

I'm sure the battery is just toast. I've seen some pretty messed up readings on some of my older portables like that. One of the TiBooks has a higher mAh than it would have had new, but it still works. As for the slowness, 512MB is pretty weak even for Tiger, but it shouldn't be that bad in UI. I would look suspect a failing HDD to cause that sort of issue, but there is no sense in not upgrading the RAM first anyways. Drop the 2GB in there and then see what happens. If you're still seeing that choppiness, then I'd move on to replacing the HDD.