Is a 17" Powerbook any good?

[dlisle20]

Personally, i find mt powerbook very slow, it jerks a lot on games and some apps take ages to load, it overheats and makes odd noises form the keyboard. IS THIS NORMAL???



Powerbook 17" 1GHZ 512 RAM

 

[spaceballl]

yeah man it is normal unless you turn the detail down a bit in your games. A 1.5 ghz G4 and a Radeon 9700/9600 don't exactly pair together for a screaming graphics system. However, most OS X apps should load pretty quickly. What's slow specifically? As for the noise... no idea... hard drive vibration?
-Kevin

 

[Solafaa]

Well i have a fully loaded PB 17" and when i play it for a long time i use an iCruve which really dose help in the heat department.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/icurve/

I have it set up with an external monitor and i never had any heat problems.

 

[jim.]

It depends on the games you run. On my 15" AlBook I have no trouble playing games like WCIII. Plays as well or better than my Athlon that I used to have. However, my brother decided to load Halo on to it during his visit last week and soon discovered that it skipped occasionally unless he turned down some of the details. I have a 9600, so it didn't surprise me.

As far as your app loading, what do you mean by slow? Up to 10 seconds for load seems to be pretty typical to me. If we are talking a minute or two here, then there may be something up. Do you typically run many apps at a time? If so your memory could be an issue, as your comp has to page out to load an app. Do you run large, i/o intensive programs like movie editing and hardcore imaging? Then your hard drive speed could be the issue.

As you see there are lots of issues affecting performance, so more details would be helpful if you are looking for a diagnosis.

Jim

 

[aricher]

why has this same thread by the same author been posted twice here? Admin - please remove one thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/103027/

 

[spaceballl]

why has this same thread by the same author been posted twice here? Admin - please remove one thread.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/103027/

Wow man... Let's not get our panties in a wad... I don't think anyone minds someone asking a question that may have been asked before... Give this guy a break.

It depends on the games you run.

In other words, it works GREAT with games, as long as you don't mind cranking down detail levels for any pretty looking new game, or playing old games... and dont think of playing any of the new games that will be out in six months or so...

 

[aricher]

Wow man... Let's not get our panties in a wad... I don't think anyone minds someone asking a question that may have been asked before... Give this guy a break.

Wow man - I don't think anyone likes to see the same exact question double posted by the same person. Maybe we should all start double posting That makes for a nice continuous thread. Whatever. I guess I'll just have to start double posting my answers.

My 1.33 was the best purchase I have ever made. It will get a bit warm when I'm stressing it with Photoshop (750 MB - 4 GB files) but not blistering hot. I did have the logic board go bad after about 8 months - Apple Store/AppleCare had it replaced and back to me in 2 days. My SuperDrive went bad (wouldn't eject disk) and was also replaced in 2 days. The SuperDrive problem was after taxing it for 3 days straight burning several hundred CDs and DVDs. Other than those problems, both fixed under warr. I have never had any issues with my PB. I have used it literally every day for 11.5 month now and it has paid for itself many times over with the billings from the work I have done with it.

Get as much RAM as possible - your 512 just won't cut it - especially since OS X like roughly 256 just to itself. I have 2 GB and find it much faster and more stable than when I had just 1 GB. I often work with external FW drives as scratch disks - works like a charm. Buy more RAM and you should be OK - also look into a faster HD - my guess is that you have a pokey 4200 RPM HD.