Little bit of advice.

[anjam]

Hi, need your opinion please.

I have a ibook - 12", g4 800mhz, 384 ram 30 gig hd. Had it about a year and its going okay but is really slowing down now and has around 800 megs of space left.

I'm looking at getting a powerbook buts its around 250 more that the ibook once i have done my desired upgrades to it so i'm thinking i might just get a ibook until the new intel powerbooks come out some time next year or whenever it may be.

Just wondering though, do you think it is worth me upgrading? I am already running tiger so the upgrades i will be getting would be 500 Mhz, 128 ram and about 50 gigs of space.

Would i notice a increase in speed? I currently have a dell desktop but want to ditch that and use this as my main machine. Do you think it will do the job?

 

[mad jew]

Had it about a year and its going okay but is really slowing down now and has around 800 megs of space left.

You need way more free space. A much cheaper way of getting your iBook back up to speed is to firstly get a bigger hard drive (external or internal) to ensure you have more than about 4GB of free space on your start up drive.

Then, secondly, you could upgrade the RAM, replace the 256MB chip with a 512MB or even 1024MB chip and you'll notice a significant improvement.

I have the exact same machine and it's just as fast as the day I bought it. It has an 80GB hard drive and 640MB of RAM though.

 

[anjam]

I really think i need more space - at least double what i have now. 30 is just not enough - my music takes aroun 12 gigs alone.

 

[mad jew]

You shouldn't be using OSX with such a small amount of spare space. Look into an external drive or, if you prefer having everything together, get an internal. That is essential! Macs don't really slow down in the same way PCs do so freeing up space should make your iBook run like new again.

While you're looking at the HDs, check out the RAM prices too. Most people consider 512MB to be the bare minimum for OSX and to be honest, it's a case of the more, the merrier.

 

[anjam]

Hmm okay - might sell my current ibook on ebay then and get myself a new one. What kind of price do you think i could get for it?

 

[shadowmoses]

I too would suggest upgrading the ram with an extra 1gb module in place of your 128mb one to give you 1.25gb RAM add to this a startup drive with 4+gb free space and your iBook will fly, it is being seriously slowed down by the lackfo free HD space and RAM......

ShadOW

 

[mad jew]

You don't need to sell it. Take it to your local Apple-selling store and get a replacement hard drive (80GB should be fine). I'm surprised the thing is running at all with only 800MB free!

Oh and prices, well I suppose it would depend on what country you live in since we all seem to have different currencies.

Maybe check eBay for what similar iBooks have sold for.

 

[anjam]

I'm tempted to sell it though just to get a brand new up to date one as i could also benefit from bluetooth and not sure how much this is going to cost to get a new hard drive etc. I live in the UK so looking on ebay for previous auctions. They seem to go for around £450-£500