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Is a PowerBook G4 Worth Buying?

jbosi said:
I've tried finding a early MacBook. On Ebay its hit or miss, either the early ones are expensive still, or the laptop is in bad condition. I still have not found a perfect match.

Comparing to what my wife has now, (Inspirion 8600; 1.6GHZ Pentium M, 1GB of RAM, 60GB HD) would she see any difference with say a 1.33GHZ or higher PPC G4 with 1GB of RAM?

Anyone have any other places to suggest where to check? I've looked on craigslist also.
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Any good old PowerPC will out do that Dell. I have a 867 PM G4 QS that my girl uses when shes at my house. She has a 1.8Ghz AMD Anthlon with 2GB of ram and she prefers the PM with only 1GB of ram. Also,just to prove my point,I'm typing this on my iMac G4,800Mhz,768MB RAM running Tiger when I have a brand new Thinkpad with an i3 and 7 Pro sitting next to me. (See specs in sig) I love PowerPC,it's what got me hooked on Mac in the first place.The reason why I still have my first PPC Mac,my PM G4. :) get a 1.33-1.67 G4 PB and max it out with 2GB of ram and Leopard and you won't regret it.:)
 
wow everyone has given more comments on this. I'm still torn. The prices on ebay are up now (i think b/c of Christmas), so finding one in my budget in decent shape is getting harder and harder.
 
Wow, these things seem to go forever. I'm kind of amazed that my 7-year-old iBook seems to just keep going without any problems (maybe one corner of the screen is a little darker than the rest, but it isn't noticeable 99 percent of the time). I've decided to max out the RAM in the hopes of getting one more year out of it while I save up for a new Macbook. It slows down when it tries to multitask (maybe the new RAM will help), but as a light-duty mobile office machine it makes a perfectly decent backup to my Intel Mini.

Low end Mac frequently posts articles from people from still use and love their Pismos!...
 
I used a 1.33 GHz iBook G4 with 1.25 GB RAM as my main machine for over a year, without any complaints.

Been using a 1.42 GHz eMac with only 512 MB RAM as my main machine for over a year now, no complaints

It's definitely doable. :)
 
Honestly, just buy a new Windows computer. Sure it isn't a Mac, but Windows 7 is a very good OS. There are some Linux distro's that I wouldn't mind using either as they have come into their prime.
 
PowerGamerX said:
Also you should reinstall your OS longwood if your MacBook is as slow as your PowerBook...
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It's not that my MacBook runs slow, my PowerBook just runs fast. And OSX is not like Windows were reinstallation makes the computer run faster.
 
longwood said:
It's not that my MacBook runs slow, my PowerBook just runs fast. And OSX is not like Windows were reinstallation makes the computer run faster.
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Thats an odd blanket statement. As in my experience, when my Mac gets slow, if I reinstall, it seems to make it faster.
 
I was in the same position as the OP. I have a 2009 13" 2.26 C2D MBP and wanted a second machine for the wife. I was thinking it would be a temporary solution until the next iPad release. I ended up buying a $220 PowerBook G4 12" 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM. This is thing is so slow, but it's only purpose was Internet. It took me 2 hours just to upgrade Tiger to Leopard. I'm debating whether to spend the extra $40 on a 1GB stick of RAM because I can't load up some of the websites in decent time.
 
iboost79 said:
I was in the same position as the OP. I have a 2009 13" 2.26 C2D MBP and wanted a second machine for the wife. I was thinking it would be a temporary solution until the next iPad release. I ended up buying a $220 PowerBook G4 12" 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM. This is thing is so slow, but it's only purpose was Internet. It took me 2 hours just to upgrade Tiger to Leopard. I'm debating whether to spend the extra $40 on a 1GB stick of RAM because I can't load up some of the websites in decent time.
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Thats what I'm afraid of...getting something like that, that will be real slow. I wonder if 1GB of RAM would help.
 
iboost79 said:
I was in the same position as the OP. I have a 2009 13" 2.26 C2D MBP and wanted a second machine for the wife. I was thinking it would be a temporary solution until the next iPad release. I ended up buying a $220 PowerBook G4 12" 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM. This is thing is so slow, but it's only purpose was Internet. It took me 2 hours just to upgrade Tiger to Leopard. I'm debating whether to spend the extra $40 on a 1GB stick of RAM because I can't load up some of the websites in decent time.
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I think you'll notice a tremendous improvement with the extra RAM. I have a 1.5 ghz with 1.25 mb of RAM, and the loading times for the Internet are great.
 
iboost79 said:
I ended up buying a $220 PowerBook G4 12" 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM. This is thing is so slow, but it's only purpose was Internet. It took me 2 hours just to upgrade Tiger to Leopard. I'm debating whether to spend the extra $40 on a 1GB stick of RAM because I can't load up some of the websites in decent time.
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You can't expect too much when you're running Leopard on machine which has minimum required RAM :)
 
Agree with previous poster who said not to spend more than $300 on it. It isn't just the limitation with flash, usually the screen is dimmer on these older PowerBooks, plus it's expensive to replace the battery. You might be lucky and find a good one, but you might find your wife just borrowing your MB/MBP more often because the experience is just way better.

If you do get a PB, stick to OS10.4 Tiger. It will have to run older versions of Safari and Firefox under that OS, but in my experience there was no speed or stability advantage (quite the opposite especially under 1GB RAM) going to Leopard on a G4.
 
You will also find that some websites just won't render properly at all. Not easy to find an up to date PPC based browser.

I just hope you weren't swayed by Macgeek18's comments, because his first sentence simply is not true at all. I had the last revision Powerbook and a HP notebook with a 1.6 Pentium M and a similar gpu to the Powerbook. The HP ran rings around the Powerbook in just about every metric. The G3s and G4s were overhyped slow processors.
 
Hmmm see I was thinking of the megahertz myth from back in the day when Jobs went on and on about it.

I'm really torn what to do. I cant believe this thread is still going....wow I wish I was on this forum a long time ago.

if I was able to get a iBook/PB 1.3GHz or higher, and 1GB or higher do you think under $200 is worth it? Ugh...so hard. Plus now I realized she has some PC games that wont work on a OS X platform so Im not sure what to do....
 
I bought my G4 12" Powerbook 1.33 with 1.2GB RAM brand new 11/2004. I rarely used it as I initially bought it to keep track of clients in a FMPro DB but switched jobs and it sat barely unused for a couple years. I started using it once or twice a week for the last two years and it's been great. The hard drive started acting weird so I replaced it with a 100GB version. Been going strong but the battery was showing it's age and I bought a brand new Apple one about a month ago. I have a nice Brenthaven case for it, the RadTech sleeve and keyboard cover plus a nice aluminum pad with cushion. It's like new. Now I want a MacBook Air as I need an Intel based Mac. I'll order one next week so I'm thinking about parting with it. It's been such a great laptop and not sure to let go of it or just keep it (but for what??? if I'll have a MBA).
 
Just another note on the good deals out there - I just picked up a 17" PowerBook 1Ghz/2GB/60GB/SuperDrive for $50!

Granted it's an 7 year old machine, but it still has a lot of life in it.
 
jbosi said:
Where did you find that at??? Please let me know!!
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I'm in Portland, Oregon. But I'm sure there are deals like this everywhere. You just have to keep your eyes open.

Oh, by the way, it came with an extra battery and an extra power adapter! Wooh! :D
 
jbosi said:
Yes but where? Was it craigslist, a local store, etc?
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Oh, you mean that where. I found my 15" and 17" PowerBooks on craigslist. One person didn't even list the 17" separately. They were selling a bunch of computer stuff and there was a small blurb about a PowerBook. So I inquired about it and they said $50. I said I'll take it!
 
longwood said:
Oh, you mean that where. I found my 15" and 17" PowerBooks on craigslist. One person didn't even list the 17" separately. They were selling a bunch of computer stuff and there was a small blurb about a PowerBook. So I inquired about it and they said $50. I said I'll take it!
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wow awesome
 
I use my 12" 1.5 GHz Powerbook with 1.25 GB RAM running 10.4 a few times a week and I would certainly not recommend it for anyone that wants to utilize youtube.
 
It's probably worth buying now on Craigslist since I can't even sell my PB G4 12" 1.5GHz in the NYC area for $220. Best offers were coming in at $160. :confused:
 
longwood said:
Just another note on the good deals out there - I just picked up a 17" PowerBook 1Ghz/2GB/60GB/SuperDrive for $50!

Granted it's an 7 year old machine, but it still has a lot of life in it.
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That is a super deal. Congratulations!
It would still be a steal at $100.
 
Maybe this will help?

I bought a 14.1" ibook,1.42mhz,1 gig mem,60 gig hd,superdrive...craigslist vanc $120 cdn vnc.

-came with tiger dvd's so redid default clean install (min-printer drivers and most lang) and from second dvd installed idvd
-updated,(reboot a few times) also found and installed itune 9.2.1 (google for it)
-dock,scale effects,no mag
-desktop,solid colour
-terminal, turn off dashboard "defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES" "killall Dock"
-spotlight,search results-uncheck all,privacy-add harddrive (prevent checking)
-installed shadowkiller,added to autostart in accounts/login items....note if you installed itunes 9.2.1 helper will be here (remove)
-installed OnyX and turned off journaling info/disk (not sure if really helps speed)...note: lots of tweaks possible with sw so be carefull
-installed latest camino browser,firefox browser,lastest flash

results-find programs run just fine,camino faster then firefox,yet firefox runs flash better (full screen utube ect),wifi is great.....id say it's about same as early p4's with basic video card...or about same as low end atom based netbooks ect

future-will update to full amount of mem 1.5gig,and new ide harddrive and possibly leopard
 
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