Bought a PowerBook G4 1.33Ghz

[Legacy]

Vert excited to own a 12" G4. When I purchased an iBook as my first Apple laptop, I had my heart set on this baby, but couldn't afford it at the time (I was a first year university undergrad).

The machine comes with everything original (including box, cables, CDs and a Neoprene sleeve and Apple Pro mouse). I believe the specs are:

1.33Ghz G4/256Mb RAM/60GB/Combo.

I will probably want to upgrade to 1,25GB RAM and I am looking into the possibility of a faster and/or larger HDD (perhaps 64Gb SSD), but I am unsure about what to expect in terms of speed increase on boot up times/ responsiveness.

Also, as I previously investigated, the machine does not have two finger scroll. Which version of iScroll would people recommend?

The machine comes with Panther, I believe.

What would people recommend I should do, to get the best out of the machine?

Many thanks in advance!

 

[keysersoze]

I'm sitting here with that exact machine. Max the RAM for sure. PATA SSD's are expensive I think, but let me know if you come across good options... all I know are the ones on Macsales.com.

http://eshop.macsales.com/search/pata+ssd

A good second option is a 7200rpm drive...cheaper for sure. Taking the 12 incher apart can be a bit challenging. Check ifixit.com for how to install a new hard drive if you want good instructions.

How's the display? Mine's pretty dim at first boot, but brightens up after about 5 minutes. Some people have replaced the CCFL backlight but it sounds like an absolute nightmare to do.

I am running 10.5.8 which works just fine. I was stuck at 10.3 when I first got it, which was lousy because it didn't seem to want to play nice with modern web browsers.

 

[Legacy]

I am based in the UK. I have heard of Hybrid drives. Would these work or is this technology too modern for the Powerbook. I am awaiting delivery on the product, but I am very excited, even though I own a Pro 13" with 2.7 i7, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD!

 

[mike457]

Just bought one of these Powerbooks myself as a gift/backup computer for my family. Supposed to come tomorrow; the only immediate upgrade I'm considering is the battery. I gather the battery on mine is fairly dead. The only hybrid drives I've seen are SATA, not PATA. The iFixit instructions are somewhat discouraging, as they rate switching hard drives as difficult in this model.

 

[tayloralmond]

Congrats on the purchase. Here are my suggestions:

1) Max the RAM by purchasing a 1GB DDR SODIMM. (256MB is soldered to the logic board for a total of 1.25GB)

2) After maxing the RAM, I'd install Leopard. Tiger may run a little bit faster, but Leopard has more up to date program versions (iTunes, VLC, iLife '09, etc.)

3) Unless you just have the money to spend, I'd recommend a 7200RPM HDD instead of an SSD. Don't get me wrong, I think SSD's are the way to go, but it's going to be hard to get a PATA SSD for a price comparable to SATA SSD's. Also, unless you're confident in doing the HDD upgrade yourself, try to find a small computer shop to do it for you because the tear-down procedure for these PowerBooks is quite intensive.

4) Help speed up Leopard by doing the following:

a) Change minimize animation to "scale effect."
b) Disable any dock animations
c) Download Tinkertool and use it to disable the 3D dock, spotlight and the dashboard.
d) Change display settings to "thousands of colors" instead of "millions."
e) Only put necessary icons on the desktop.
f) Install ShadowKiller (http://unsanity.com/haxies/shadowkiller) to disable the background shadows of windows.

There are plenty more optimizations and tweaks out there, but these are some of the ones I chose to do on my PowerPC based machines.

EDIT: For 2 finger scrolling, download iScroll2 from here: http://iscroll2.sourceforge.net/