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ibook ram

J

jigglyjon

macrumors member
Original poster
Hey I am looking to upgrade my ibook ram. How much should I add? Will i experience a exponential increase in speed from adding 256 compared to 512? I get alot of swirly circles whenever i use gmail or ebay, mabye becuase of java script, and wanted to know if adding more memory would remedy this.
Any first hand experience would be good.
 
Just go for the stick of 512 mb, so then you will have 768 mb total. I have an eMac, and I only had 256 mb - going to 768 mb was heaven. I am just an average home user, and all of my RAM ends up getting used. Go for the 512.
 
auxplage said:
Just go for the stick of 512 mb, so then you will have 768 mb total. I have an eMac, and I only had 256 mb - going to 768 mb was heaven. I am just an average home user, and all of my RAM ends up getting used. Go for the 512.
Click to expand...

thx for the quick reply, I was going towards the 512 myself, but the ibook only has 128 built in ram and one slot, so 640 would be the max for it. Has anyone seen a difference between 512 and 256 upgrades in an ibook?
 
384 Mb total RAM is too little to see the main speed increase. You get the most speed improvement with between 512 Mb and 1 Gb of total RAM. over 1 GB any gains depend mostly on which and how many programs you run.

Since you only have one socket to play with, get the 512.

Thanks,
Trevor
 
My iBook G3 came with 128 MB, which I upped by 512 to give 640MB (the maximimum in G3 models).

It did make a difference, but I still get the spinning beachball sometimes. This is usually in Safari though, so that could be more due to my crappy dialup connection.

On the whole most apps seem to purr along nicely.

And anyway, with the small difference in cost between 256 and 512 sticks these days I would always recommend the largest you can get for the price you are willing to pay.

**Edit

Your signature says you have a G4 iBook with 256MB of Ram, so does that mean you have added a 128MB chip in the second slot already?

Also, don't all G4 models accept 1GB sticks? Ifyou can get 1GB for a decent price (and if you search there are threads on this 😉) then maybe you could do that and then you know you have maxed the baby out.
 
I definitely think you should get as much ram as you're willing to also, but I should point out that it will not fix the eBay issue. There's some coding issue between eBay and Safari. At least on my computer (iBook G4/800/640MB), I get significant beach-balling on eBay in Safari, and none in Firefox. There was another thread about this recently, and I don't believe anyone reached any conclusion of a fix for Safari....

I had been using Firefox, but I've been getting some weird system crashes recently. Once or twice, the system completely locked up, including full mouse and keyboard non-responsiveness, with no KP screen or anything, forcing me to reboot. I'm trying to root out what might be causing it, so I'm back to Safari temporarily, because I only got these after going to FF. Hopefully it's something else though, because I'm starting to miss FF.... 🙁
 
mkrishnan said:
I definitely think you should get as much ram as you're willing to also, but I should point out that it will not fix the eBay issue. There's some coding issue between eBay and Safari. At least on my computer (iBook G4/800/640MB), I get significant beach-balling on eBay in Safari, and none in Firefox. There was another thread about this recently, and I don't believe anyone reached any conclusion of a fix for Safari....

I had been using Firefox, but I've been getting some weird system crashes recently. Once or twice, the system completely locked up, including full mouse and keyboard non-responsiveness, with no KP screen or anything, forcing me to reboot. I'm trying to root out what might be causing it, so I'm back to Safari temporarily, because I only got these after going to FF. Hopefully it's something else though, because I'm starting to miss FF.... 🙁
Click to expand...
thx for the reply, i was looking at firefox too, but one thing that annoys me is the fact that pushing the delete doesnt go to the previous page, maybe in another post, but ya know why?
also to the previous poster, the ibook g4 comes with 256 standard.
 
jigglyjon said:
...but the ibook only has 128 built in ram and one slot
Click to expand...

So that means when they shipped your iBook it came wih 2 x 128MB sticks and no free slots?

If so that's a bit lame on Apple's part I'd say
 
deebster said:
So that means when they shipped your iBook it came wih 2 x 128MB sticks and no free slots?

If so that's a bit lame on Apple's part I'd say
Click to expand...

ya its kinda weak, I thought it was enough, but as of late i have been noticing some slowdown.
 
As everyone else has said go for the 512MB stick.

If you have not already done so I suggest that you repair permissions using the disk utility, if you are seeing the spinning beach ball effect using other programs as well as the particular issues that you mention.

I should also mention that the last panther release 10.3.7 for some reason has slowed down the launch of certain programs such as Mail. 10.3.8 which will be released shortly will hopefully fix these issues.
 
RAM is very important, even for a normal user it helps out a lot. Go for teh most you can afforde, dont get anythign less then 512MB, thats the least you can do.
 
Solafaa said:
RAM is very important, even for a normal user it helps out a lot. Go for teh most you can afforde, dont get anythign less then 512MB, thats the least you can do.
Click to expand...
Ya i went out and looked online and found 90 dollars for a 512 of no name ram. How does that price sound to you all? Low? High? I just did a simple pricegrabber search. and Solafaa, wow you really like your ram, 4gb on your desktop.... now thats impressive ^.^ 🙂
 
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