gonna reinstall osx on my powerbook g4...panther or tiger?

[student_trap]

hey, i'd just like some opinions on this...

since buying my mbp, my powerbook has become pretty much redundant for anything other than word processing and internet use, at the moment its super slow because it has virtually no hd space left, so i have backed up, and want to reinstall the os, clean it up a bit and get it running the internet superfast to use when i am travelling, keeping my mbp on my desk for the rest of the time.

I have a copy of both panther and tiger that came with the powerbook (i bought it a week before tiger came out and apple sent me it for free!), but it is currently running panther.

now its a stock powerbook 12" 1.5 Ghz with 512 ram, and it wont need to run anything too complex: just word/safari/idvd/itunes, however it would be nice to have dashboard (i have got used to it on my mbp), but not essential.

I don't want to spend any more money on this thing, but want to know which would be faster...i have heard that tiger puts more strain on ram, but also that powerbooks run faster with tiger than with panther...which of these statements is true?

which version of osx should i use?

Thanks in advance

 

[killmoms]

Tiger.

 

[CRAZYBUBBA]

Tiger requires more resources. If you won't miss spotlight, dashboard I'd go for panther.

I couldn't find info online to back this up, but im pretty sure its true..

 

[840quadra]

Tiger requires more resources. If you won't miss spotlight, dashboard I'd go for panther.

I couldn't find info online to back this up, but im pretty sure its true..

Yes and no.

It needs more (on paper), but Tiger will run faster and be more responsive. The tuning to the OS is a bit more streamlined, and basic OS and finder functions will be noticeably more snappy.

You can always disable items such as Dashboard and such with 3rd party tools if you don't like them, and still enjoy the fresher OS.

 

[matd2100]

Put it this way, I upgraded my imac G3 450 from Panther to Tiger, and Tiger is much more responsive, faster loading, faster searching. Faster everything. Just make sure you turn off dashboard if you don't need it, otherwise it will eat up a lot of that 512MB ram.

Conclusion: Use Tiger not Panther simply for the speed boosts.

 

[student_trap]

hey guys, in the end i updated to tiger, and am finding the computer nice and snappy. i'm sure that if i began to ust more ram intensive apps then i'd notice a considerable slowing down, but that is not my intention.

Just as a side note, i also cleaned the thing up with iklean and it looks lovelly!

thanks for all of the help guys, and to any that are considering doing the same thing, i'd stay go with tiger, it runs lovely!

 

[dazzerj]

Problematic G4 Powerbook

Hi Guys,

I'm new to the forum, as most people I came here in search of assistance with a problem from those who know more than me!

History: 867MHz G4 PowerBook. 640MB RAM (128+512) ex-work machine, that is I got another job and acquired this Mac in the process of departing so I don't have any install disks.

I had installed Tiger prior to leaving and had no problems at all. Recently the HD (30GB original) failed, so I bought a new WD 80GB drive fitted it and installed 10.4 from a disk at my new employer. This worked fine for 2 months then during a restart I received "Cannot find root user. Restarting and trying again" continually. I booted to the install disk and tried a disk repair, but then at the next restart it had totally lost the HD. It appeared (as I tried it in an external USB enclosure) as if the disk had died, so I returned it and got a replacement under warranty.

I fitted this last week, it ran for 2 days, then I got the same message again and it lost the system disk once more!

Does anybody have any idea what might be causing this? I wondered if the motherboard battery might have failed so I tried rebooting and zapping the pRAM, no joy.

With the HD removed the MAC boots to the 'missing system folder' icon, but won't see or boot to the disk when it is connected via USB. Checking the disk on another Mac works okay it seems to be healthy enough. Everything is present and accessible.

I will try an Archive and Install when I get the install disk again, but does anybody know if there might be a hardware issue using 10.4 from a Desktop machine on my PowerBook? As it was a very early model should I stick 10.3 do you think (assuming I can find some install disks)?

I really do miss my Mac and don't mind committing it to the grave if it's truly dead, but this feels to me like a software issue rather than hardware.

I'm not knowledgeable in Unix so the thought of entering the dark world to sort this worries me slightly, as even navigating the file system is a mystery to me.

Any hints or better still first hand experience would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in anticipation.

Daz