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G4 Powerbook Upgrade - Snow Leopard Questions

D

DaveWeldon

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 12, 2009
2
0
Hi All,

1st post here, although i tend to drop in most lunch times for a read before i get back to work.

I've got a 1.33Ghz G4 Powerbook and can't see anything on the new Macbook that would justify an upgrade other than a bigger hard drive and (i guess) a bit more speed (for what i use it for anwyay).

So, to save myself a bit of money i was going to buy a 250Gb hard drive, OS X Leopard and possibly a bit more RAM. However, i understand that Snow Leopard isn't far off, so is it worth me waiting or will waiting get me into difficulty? I seem to remember Apple saying that all OS's after Leopard would not support the old pre-intel chips.

So, do i buy Leopard now or do i wait for Snow Leopard?

Any advice is much appreciated,

Thanks,
Dave.
 
Apple haven't said anything officially, but it's 99.9% likely Snow Leopard won't run on PPC.
 
I'd buy a new laptop..although the 12" was pretty good for its size, it's no match anymore and once SL comes out, there's going to be less and less PPC/Universal apps and more Intel only ones, if that affects you. What do you do on your laptop?
 
Thanks guys.

I pretty much use it for music and web browsing these days as well as a bit of web development and graphic work from time to time (nothing that an old version of photoshop can't handle though). I look at computers all day at work and can't really handle looking at them when i get home. And my old G4 is just too reliable to sack off.

I'll get around to buying a new one someday but i don't think now is the time. Although the new ones are very nice :).
 
I would wait a while for the OS. Even if it s 99% sure that it will not be compatible with PPCs, if it is this will be a good deal as it s said to be a lot faster. That makes the difference on an old mac...
 
It is very unlikely that Snow Leopard will support PPC. They're all making it "light" and "optimized" for current computing environment, which means they'll have to take out the PPC codes within the OS X. So I'd say 90%+ chance of Snow Leopard NOT supporting PPC.

And the current Macbooks aren't just "minor" processor gains. PPC 1.33GHz and the Core 2 Duo's 2.0GHz is a pretty big difference. G4 isn't "Dual Core" is it? the difference is HUGE.

And the graphic card if 9400M will surely help with Snow Leopard actually goes the path of OpenCL, which will use the GPU's processing power in non-GPU applications to boost performance.

To be honest, if I were you, I'd sell away the G4 PB while it's worth some money. Once PPC Support drops with Snow Leopard, I'm quite sure the price will be crashed. And get the Base MacBook. That's a huge upgrade for you already.

But it's really up to you, I'm sure you love your PowerBook since it's been with you for a while. So HDD upgrade and RAM upgrade will help you with performance gain as well :)
 
I have a Powerbook G4 17' 1.5GHz and a Macbook Core Duo... Man the Blackbook smokes the Powerbook out of the water... The G4 struggles even with the simplest tasks as Flash Videos, while the Intel runs smooth as it can be.
 
pbkiller said:
I have a Powerbook G4 17' 1.5GHz and a Macbook Core Duo... Man the Blackbook smokes the Powerbook out of the water... The G4 struggles even with the simplest tasks as Flash Videos, while the Intel runs smooth as it can be.
Click to expand...

Yeah the Core Duo is something like 4 times faster than the G4/G5..
 
Sell it while it's worth money, is probably the best advice thus far.

I did the same thing with mine just before MacWorld.

It's honestly not worth the trouble. If you can get something that's better and faster, then why not right? Plus I just can't stand how slow G4 Macs can get on simple tasks like Flash. It's just so frustrating, because so many sites these days have flash in one way or another.

Sell it, and get a used MacBook. You'll be much happier.
 
this brings up an interesting query for me. I currently have a powerbook 15 inch and 20 inch intel iMac. I use both for work as I am a traveling rep who works from home on the iMac and the field with the Powerbook. I am currently on 10.4 on both as I just didn't see any huge benefits of 10.5 and 10.4 is so stable for me.

I will be considering upgrading to 10.6 when it comes out as if the speed is as good for intel as they claim, then that could be a huge benefit with my iMac. On the other hand, I do want to have a network that could talk to each other nicely. Will 10.4 and 10.6 still play nice?
 
CultHero said:
this brings up an interesting query for me. I currently have a powerbook 15 inch and 20 inch intel iMac. I use both for work as I am a traveling rep who works from home on the iMac and the field with the Powerbook. I am currently on 10.4 on both as I just didn't see any huge benefits of 10.5 and 10.4 is so stable for me.

I will be considering upgrading to 10.6 when it comes out as if the speed is as good for intel as they claim, then that could be a huge benefit with my iMac. On the other hand, I do want to have a network that could talk to each other nicely. Will 10.4 and 10.6 still play nice?
Click to expand...

I'd upgrade to 10.5 anyways, its a lot better than 10.4..
 
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