So I gave my 6yr old the old 12" G4 Powerbook she of course like to play facebook games. Is there a good way to make that happen reasonably smoothly?
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Facebook and a G4
- Thread starter GermanyChris
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I think it's possible, depending on the version of OS X you plan to use. It will be a smoother experience if the G4 is running on OS X.4 Tiger. I'm currently running OS X.5 Leopard on a 1.25 GHz G4 Mac Mini as a HTPC and it has some trouble with some flash websites and streaming 480p content from Hulu and etc.
But I think the biggest problem will be Adobe Flash. The latest version for PPC Macintoshes is 10.1 and it's slow. You could run Flash version 9.x, but you may run into some snags about games wanting you to use version 10.x or higher. Also, think about security since Adobe no longer offers updated versions for PPC. With your 6 year old on Facebook, she may click on a spammy link that may lead to old Flash exploits. It's a small possibility, but something to think about.
Honestly, best thing is to run Firefox with some plugins that disable ads (including facebook ads) and a flash blocker that white lists facebook.com
Hope this helps and that someone better suited chimes in.
But I think the biggest problem will be Adobe Flash. The latest version for PPC Macintoshes is 10.1 and it's slow. You could run Flash version 9.x, but you may run into some snags about games wanting you to use version 10.x or higher. Also, think about security since Adobe no longer offers updated versions for PPC. With your 6 year old on Facebook, she may click on a spammy link that may lead to old Flash exploits. It's a small possibility, but something to think about.
Honestly, best thing is to run Firefox with some plugins that disable ads (including facebook ads) and a flash blocker that white lists facebook.com
Hope this helps and that someone better suited chimes in.
Ah, yes! I completely forgot about Camino. I think it has a built-in ad/flash blocker too, if I remember correctly.
As for getting Tiger, I'm not sure where you could find copies in Germany. I would definitely check eBay or Amazon.
By the way, is the PowerBook slow with Leopard and Facebook games right now? Have you tried doing a reformat and installation of Leopard to see if a new installation speeds things up?
The Leopard install is fresh with the new HDD so about 3 months old. It has Leopard because thats what I have.
As far as Germany is concerned, I'm a DoD Civilian so places in the US are good.
I strongly recommend going back to Tiger and then installing either Camino or TenFourFox optimized for PPC G4. The memory footprints on these PPC optimized versions are smaller compared to Safari on Leopard and they would run snappier.
The greatest and the fastest 12" G4 is the 1.5GHz model which will only have up to 1.25GHz of RAM. It is recommended to have more than 1GHz of RAM to run Leopard flawlessly, 1.25GHz barely goes over that. While on Tiger that amount of RAM is more than enough.
The greatest and the fastest 12" G4 is the 1.5GHz model which will only have up to 1.25GHz of RAM. It is recommended to have more than 1GHz of RAM to run Leopard flawlessly, 1.25GHz barely goes over that. While on Tiger that amount of RAM is more than enough.
TenFourFox 7.0 (with flash enabled) is a far better bet than FireFox.
I"m not sure how anyone could get smooth 480p video on a 1.25 GHz G4.... this 1 GHz Beige gets smooth 240p, and fairly jerky 360p... and 480p, forget about it.
I"m not sure how anyone could get smooth 480p video on a 1.25 GHz G4.... this 1 GHz Beige gets smooth 240p, and fairly jerky 360p... and 480p, forget about it.
To be honest I explicitely went from Tiger to Leopard because of Safari and its extensions managing Flash nicely.
Be it Tiger or Leopard, for Flash games like Farmville which stresses out even the i7 under certain circumstances, I fear the G4 will be a little overwhelmed. For general learning purposes it should more than suffice, though.
Be it Tiger or Leopard, for Flash games like Farmville which stresses out even the i7 under certain circumstances, I fear the G4 will be a little overwhelmed. For general learning purposes it should more than suffice, though.
I'm going to start looking for a Tiger disc and we'll go from there.
Has the 1.5ghz and it's fine for everything but "It Girl" and "Happy Aquarium"
I was just hoping there was a way to smooth things out and not jump immediately to 100% processor use..
You will get high fan speeds and heat for extended periods of time on flash facebook games. Even modern mac laptops get high fan speeds and heat when you try extended periods of flash