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

g4 Powerbook dead HD???

H

hastyle

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 9, 2007
91
0
Hey guys, i got an old Powerbook that the whole family use to surf the net. I notice its been super slow lately. Ive never had a problem with this notebook, I've only done 2 reinstall in the time ive owned it. I recentluy did another one, and notice its still slow, loading websites is slow, cant watch movies on it. This is a notebook i use to do photoshop and illustrator work on.

Do you think its just its time? I think it could be the hard drive or memory, is there any type of diagnostic i can do to find out what the problem is?

thanks.
 
Ok ive done the first test and all hardware pass the test. I also did the repair disk check and it also shows that its fine. Computer is still slow even for just web browsing, sometime it freezes. Any suggestions?!!?

thank you.
 
One thing more to consider is how fragmented your HDD may be. Once you restored all your content, applied updates etc., how much room is left for OS X to work with?

I'll assume you have 2GB of RAM installed but if your hard drive is nearly full that can cause an issue. OS X uses a swap file despite how much memory a user has installed, if there's not enough room, that could explain many things.

I have a PowerBook G4 as well which I refurbished. It's no slouch, but does show it's age when it comes to running newer software or even playing back some video formats. One thing I did do though was upgrade the hard drive to a 320GB Western Digital. The upgrade from my 80 gig original was wonderful. :eek:

So, a couple questions...

How big is your hard drive and what version of OS X are you using with it? Finally, how much RAM do you have installed?
 
its been formated and reinstalled recently. its 1.67 ghz, 1gb memory, 93 gb hd with 80gb free. OS X 10.4.11.
 
With plenty of space free, it may be the fact that it's just it's time. My 1.5Ghz G4 works great with CS2 (PPC native) and such, but likewise, video codecs and some websites really chug on my old machine.

It won't keep me from loving it, but as higher demands from software move along, the old G4 has trouble keeping up (even my old launch MacBook will play a 720p quicktime video while my PowerBook with it's dedicated Ati 9700 will drop frames).

It sounds like you god things pretty solid and the only difference is I have Leopard installed on mine. Still, the power of the G4 processor is not what it used to be. Moore's law be damned... :apple:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back