Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

The Loaf

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 17, 2007
32
26
I have an older PPC G4 powerbook running Tiger 10.4.11 and Safari 3.1.2. Well, I'm finally getting messages that certain sites won't support this browser anymore, etc. No surprise there, it was bound to happen eventually. I need to upgrade, however, I'm leery of installing/upgrading anything that will slow my already sluggish computer down. Did a little search, and saw some posts that said Safari 4 was buggy when people upgraded (these were old posts, mind you, from when Safari 4 was first released). Did they ever work things out? What would be best/fastest on an older machine like mine. Thinking about Firefox or Chrome--if they offer a version that will work. Whatever is smooth and easy. Kind of hard finding out new information about old issues...

I know I'm living in the past (I have a new MacBook Pro for most things), but I still use this old clunker for certain tasks, and as a back up, and I want to make any transitions from this life to the next easy for her. So, what browser works well on your old machines? I really appreciate your advice.
 
I have an older PPC G4 powerbook running Tiger 10.4.11 and Safari 3.1.2. Well, I'm finally getting messages that certain sites won't support this browser anymore, etc. No surprise there, it was bound to happen eventually. I need to upgrade, however, I'm leery of installing/upgrading anything that will slow my already sluggish computer down. Did a little search, and saw some posts that said Safari 4 was buggy when people upgraded (these were old posts, mind you, from when Safari 4 was first released). Did they ever work things out? What would be best/fastest on an older machine like mine. Thinking about Firefox or Chrome--if they offer a version that will work. Whatever is smooth and easy. Kind of hard finding out new information about old issues...

I know I'm living in the past (I have a new MacBook Pro for most things), but I still use this old clunker for certain tasks, and as a back up, and I want to make any transitions from this life to the next easy for her. So, what browser works well on your old machines? I really appreciate your advice.

The latest version of Firefox works with Tiger. Just visit mozilla.com and hit "Download". Also, just hitting the :apple: and updating Safari to 4.1.3 would be fine, too.
 
Camino is great but I really prefer Opera. I think that Opera 10 should run in tiger and I know operaa 9 does. Its a very fast browser.
 
Um, I'm pretty sure the latest version of safari is 5.something. But anyhow, I am a firefox user and I really like the way it works

Safari 5 is 10.5+ the Op is running Tiger. The latest version of safari for tiger is version 4.x.x.
 
And its worth mentioning that, while 4.1 is the latest version of Safari that'll run on 10.4, it does include most of the under-the-hood speed and rendering enhancements of Safari 5, so it's actually a pretty substantial upgrade from previous versions, including 4.0.x.

I think on an older computer like that Camino will still be faster on average, but you definitely want to get the latest version of Safari as well, and in my experience Safari is much faster with complex javascript stuff than Camino or Firefox. Depending on what you do most you may even come out ahead with Safari.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.