I just ordered a 512mb stick on ebay for my 500mhz 12" ibook g3. Will I notice a difference in speed for web sites and other things? The ibook currently runs ios 10.3.9. With the ram I'll have 640mb total system memory.
Thanks!
It will definitely make a difference, but being in 10.3 your list of browsers is short. You might want to consider moving to 10.4 and using TenFourFox or TenFourKit.
Not really. 10.4 will be more optimized. You'll also have access to more apps, particularly TenFourFox which is Firefox for PowerPC Mac. The current stable version of that browser is version 17 and Floodgap, the maker of T4Fx makes a G3 version.Have the ram installed and still on osx 10.3.9 (using it right now to post this!) and everything runs a lot smoother. Not sure if moving to osx 10.4 would be a good idea though. Wouldn't this 500mhz processor have even more trouble running that updated os?
I'd definitely install Debian with LXDE. 640MB will be tough to use, but might be useable, again, this is coming from someone who can't browse the web with 4GB.
Debian LXDE would definitely make everything faster. You could also try OS 9, but I reccomend Linux.
so can you, with debian, use:
iTunes or something that will sync music/movies/books etc with your iphone?
How about an office suite that will format the more advanced docs correctly between industry leader microsoft office?
How about XBMC or maybe video editing like imovie or photo manager like iphoto with all its editing capabilities? Can you create music like with protools/logic/cubase/garage band ?
Work with aperture or photoshop? Flash video?
Games?
I don't what I would be able to use with linux... and I'm quite curious
iTunes: Mplayer, jailbreak the iPhone, drag the files in.
Office: Libre Office
XBMC: Mplayer
iPhoto: Gimp
Photoshop/Aperture: Gimp
Flash video, NO you can not, and never will be able to use that atrocity of software called flash.
Download the utube videos and play them in Mplayer
Games: Tons of hardcore games! Minesweeper, chess, mohong...
Libreoffice does a terrible job at best with microsoft office docs. I have it installed and I have yet to open up single document without a hiccup. (v4.x)
Mplayer have no library manager, no plugin system, unusable with HD video on this PBG4.
Gimp sounds like it MIGHT work, havent tested it yet. Does Gimp allow to manage your photo albums?
Flash does more than just video Our electronic flight bags (EFB:s) are based on java and flash. Same goes for our CBT-training which I use for the checks every year.
I am however greateful for your answer, it helped me to realize just how bad of an experience debian would be for me.
I almost think MorphOS would be a better choice
If you want to dual boot you can install an optical HDD caddy and put Debian on an HDD in the caddy, that would let you try Debian without always using it, you might find that you like it.
Note, your Mac is about 50mhz faster than the G4 my coworker runs on and she's running Leopard with the Adobe Creative Suite 4. It's a bit slow, but not a dog. My point being, that your G3 will be fine on Tiger.
The particular G4 I mentioned is the first model that Apple released, so it has the old G3 bus, PCI and no target disk mode capability. Does that make a difference, or does the fact that it's a G4 trump everything?G4 though makes a hell of difference thanks to AltiVec. It's much faster clock for clock than G3 when it comes to Altivec accelerated OS features.
My G3 500 Dual USB iBook was a dog with Tiger and 640MB RAM. With 10.3.9 it was a lot snappier. But I was using it for mainly for CS2 these days, no Internet browsing etc. iBook's crappy HDD had certainly a lot of impact on performance.
On the other hand, my 466 Clamshell with 576 RAM runs Tiger smoothly thanks to SSD and OS optimization (no shadows, Spotlight etc.). Even browsing with Camino is bearable.