got an ibook g4 off ebay, now what?

TheG3Guy · Aug 30, 2008

i somehow managed to get an ibook g4 1GHz off ebay for 270$. It has panther and only 384 mb ram, let alone a stone age CD ROM drive and a 30gb HD. I plan to put leopard on it and i want to know what the first most important upgrade i should put in is. besides ram, because i plan to get either a 512 stick or a 1gb stick. I may need a combo drive too and DEFINATELY a larger hd at some point.

kornyboy · Aug 30, 2008

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When you upgrade to leopard I imagine that it is going to be quite slow. You may be ok though. I'd definitely upgrade the HD after the RAM and do all of this before installing leopard.

Bengt77 · Aug 30, 2008

TheG3Guy said:
i somehow managed to get an ibook g4 1GHz off ebay for 270$. It has panther and only 384 mb ram, let alone a stone age CD ROM drive and a 30gb HD. I plan to put leopard on it and i want to know what the first most important upgrade i should put in is. besides ram, because i plan to get either a 512 stick or a 1gb stick. I may need a combo drive too and DEFINATELY a larger hd at some point.

I hate crashing parties, but with all the stuff you need to buy extra (a bigger hard drive for about $50, old (and therefore more expensive) RAM modules for some $100, a combo or even a super drive for about $50), wouldn't it have been easier to buy a first generation Intel MacBook? They have all those things standard. If you consider upgrading to Leopard, then a drive that reads DVDs is a must, since you can't get Leopard on CDs like you could with Tiger.

longwood · Aug 30, 2008

i don't know about anyone else, but i love my G4. a lot of my friends have a macbook and compared to my ibook the macbook seems to run pretty slow. i'm perfectly happy with powerpc.

to answer the OP questions: definitely upgrade the ram - it's easy to do and a fairly cheap upgrade. the hard drive is a little bit trickier to upgrade but not impossible. you may be better picking up an external and putting most of your stuff on that. have fun.

TheG3Guy · Aug 30, 2008

good ideas.. i think that perhaps the hd can wait but yes i will put ram in. i had a 1.5GHz ppc G4 with leopard before and i thought it was fantastic so i dont see how its unusable. and as for the macbook i was going to originally but for the price and the stuff you get, i really could not see doing that. id rather get the pro

California · Aug 31, 2008

I had one of those 1 ghz a couple of years ago. I put a superdrive and hd in it. You might as well, once you open them up, you have easy access to the optical as well as hd.

The hard drives suck on those older ibooks.

Get a superdrive dual layer.

Get a hard drive and get the 1 gig of ram.

You should be able to do it for under 200 bucks and you can sell your old combo drive and old hard drive for a few bucks in the meantime.

The 1 gig ram should be like sixty max.
Get the 250gb hard drive.
Get the UJ 847 superdrive. Faster better and you are maxed out.

alphaod · Aug 31, 2008

So why did you buy an iBook?

And Leopard will be a bad idea. Of if you already own it, it doesn't hurt to try, but if plan to buy it, I wouldn't.

TheG3Guy · Aug 31, 2008

well i bought an ibook because im really not doing too much besides ripping dvds and going on the internet. my original plan was to get a macbook... believe me i love the macbook.. but for 700$ for a 1.83 coreduo from 2006 i just couldnt bare spending the money. Considering its piss poor video card and what im using it for i decided to wait until i can get a pro. its not worth it...intel or not id rather have a good old ibook than the modern equivalent. the only real draw i see with the new one is the size and the camera so i could have video chat...thats it. as for the leopard disc i do have one

OrangeSVTguy · Sep 1, 2008

Yes you can upgrade the memory with a 1gb DDR module($40-50), a Superdrive ($50) and a 120gb($50) or 250gb HDD($80). So for less then $200 you can have a fully upgraded and pretty much maxed out iBook G4 that is capable of running Leopard decently. You can sell your existing parts and get maybe close to $40 in return.

kalex · Sep 1, 2008

u can get macbooks alot cheaper than that. I had powerbook G4 12" model and it was great but Leopard on it wasn't that great. it was fine for browsing and email, but i had really bad time playing movies on it. no matter what conversion i did, i got very choppy playback. it seem to be stemming from Leopard and people here advised to install Tiger. problem with that was that i had apps that only work with Leopard. so I ended up selling it and getting Late 2007 macbook for $600 on craigslist. its in perfect condition and still has warranty on it.

Alex

TheG3Guy · Sep 1, 2008

ive really searched high and low in craigslist/ebay/classifieds for months and none turned up lower than 680 for me....well there was one for 400 with a smashed screen

kalex · Sep 1, 2008

Took me a while to find one too. but it did happen

I was able to get one for my sister (2.16 Macbook) for $550 and one for myself. it wasn't easy. lots of haggling but its defintely doable.

Good luck

alphaod · Sep 1, 2008

kalex said:
Took me a while to find one too. but it did happen

I was able to get one for my sister (2.16 Macbook) for $550 and one for myself. it wasn't easy. lots of haggling but its defintely doable.

Good luck

I had to go with a 12" PB

MacHappytjg · Sep 1, 2008

my friend runs leopard on his ibook g4 800mhz, 640mb of ram, 30gb hd just fine but i dont see how he can fit his stuff on his hd he ended up with 15gb left with all the apps installed and everything, and i ran leopard on a 1ghz with 768mb of ram and found a way to use photoshop and flash with msn and firefox at the same time and ran just fine

alphaod · Sep 1, 2008

MacHappytjg said:
my friend runs leopard on his ibook g4 800mhz, 640mb of ram, 30gb hd just fine but i dont see how he can fit his stuff on his hd he ended up with 15gb left with all the apps installed and everything, and i ran leopard on a 1ghz with 768mb of ram and found a way to use photoshop and flash with msn and firefox at the same time and ran just fine

15GB after all the apps and OS? Not bad. I had like 100MB left after I installed Vista and my apps on my tablet computer (on a 32GB drive)...

MacHappytjg · Sep 1, 2008

alphaod said:
15GB after all the apps and OS? Not bad. I had like 100MB left after I installed Vista and my apps on my tablet computer (on a 32GB drive)...

well and i mean flash 8 photoshop cs and like ilife 08 and ms office 2004, but windows in my mind sucks except for some games roller coaster tycoon FTW!

alphaod · Sep 2, 2008

MacHappytjg said:
well and i mean flash 8 photoshop cs and like ilife 08 and ms office 2004, but windows in my mind sucks except for some games roller coaster tycoon FTW!

Yeah I installed Office 2007 and I had 100MB left

But it's a tablet computer and OneNote is great.

MacHappytjg · Sep 2, 2008

alphaod said:
Yeah I installed Office 2007 and I had 100MB left

But it's a tablet computer and OneNote is great.

ic....

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got an ibook g4 off ebay, now what?

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