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brandonjb85

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 21, 2009
22
0
I have a older emac i bought from my collage professor and it is running quit sluggish. When I browse on fire fox or safari it acts liek it take a while before it lets me scroll on the page or anything. It's used mainly for net surfing any way and I am wondering why it is running like this. Could my RAM need replaced?
 
Did you do a clean reinstall of the system afternyou bought it?

From the Finder, select the Go menu, and click on Utilities. Open Activity Monitor to see if anything seems to be taking up all of your resources.

Sites with Flash will likely perform poorly on that machine.

What are the eMac's specs? On a machine of that age, you should always install the maximum possible amount of RAM.
 
That old, slow graphics card, slow bus and processor, and small amount of memory severely degrade loading of web pages. I have a G4/700 mhz iMac maxed out at 726 MB memory with plenty of free disk space, and it takes forever to load web pages. Altho the suggestions to reinstall software are good intentions, I don't think it'll do any good. It's the ancient hardware.
 
we still dont know which eMac he 's got , and sluggish needs a interpretation
for example :
i do not think my iMac g3 700mhz with 768 mb ram and 16mb Rage 128 Ultra graphic is sluggish considering the hardware , but compared to my eMac with 2gb ram and 64mb graphic radeon 9600 it certainly is
but aside that it still opens all websites and if i don't watch youtube above 360p its watchable even on the iMac g3

it all depends what you expect from the computer you use and what you compare it with
if i compare my eMac with the old dell precision that i had before with dual xeons and 3.2ghz and 2x graphic card 2900 xt crossfire running linux of course the eMac will be sluggish , but even a early macpro will look sluggish in comparison
but you just dont need such a fast computer to look at some websites or watch a film on youtube

most important when opening websites is the speed of your broadband connection , most isp cut your speed at peaktimes a bit not that important if you only get 40mbit of your 100mbit line, but if you only have a 6mbit line and get cut down to 2 mbit you will notice , and the server the websites are hosted on are important too among other things...
 
My emac is got os 10.4.11 and is a power pc 4 1.42 mhz (i think ) I dont have the discs to do a clean install trust me I would like to. All I have are the upgrade dvds
 
thats very unusual as the eMac g4 1.42 came with grey install discs with 10.4.4 tiger from apple

the upgrade discs will look for a existing panther on your eMac to "upgrade"
they don't do a proper install (for example do not archive your old files if needed)

but try the following first reset your browser, empty cache and go into
Finder ---> Applications---->utilities----->disc utility----->
select select your boot disc ---> click on repair disc permissions :)
that might do the trick

but i recommend to get a "Retail" 10.4 Tiger disc of ebay they are not that expensive compare with other mac OS discs like leopard and look like that
tiger_install_dvd.jpg
 
thats very unusual as the eMac g4 1.42 came with grey install discs with 10.4.4 tiger from apple

the upgrade discs will look for a existing panther on your eMac to "upgrade"
they don't do a proper install (for example do not archive your old files if needed)

but try the following first reset your browser, empty cache and go into
Finder ---> Applications---->utilities----->disc utility----->
select select your boot disc ---> click on repair disc permissions :)
that might do the trick

but i recommend to get a "Retail" 10.4 Tiger disc of ebay they are not that expensive compare with other mac OS discs like leopard and look like that
tiger_install_dvd.jpg

Or you could just download it....? Seeing as you are entitled to 10.4 for that machine...
 
maybe you could even ask apple to send you the disc's , as they came with the eMac originally 10.4.4 tiger , they might charge you something , its worth asking , they dont sell tiger any longer officially , but maybe they have a couple disc's still lying around ....be very kind on the phone with apple that helps a lot .....if they are clever they send you the disc to make it a nice experience for you with apple ...and they might win a future customer .....:confused:
 
That old, slow graphics card, slow bus and processor, and small amount of memory severely degrade loading of web pages. I have a G4/700 mhz iMac maxed out at 726 MB memory with plenty of free disk space, and it takes forever to load web pages. Altho the suggestions to reinstall software are good intentions, I don't think it'll do any good. It's the ancient hardware.

I would argue this point. My iMac is running 10.5.8 on 512Mb of memory, Safari 4.0.5, and it loads web pages beautifully. Internet video is a little laggy, but more memory I'm sure would fix this. I have instant scrolling response. Flash slows things down a bit, I use ClickToFlash, and that solves that problem. Also, while this is going on, iTunes 9, Mail, and Photoshop CS is running in the background. Obsolete is all in the eye of the beholder. :)

I think all this eMac needs is a fresh reinstall of Tiger (or Leopard if you've got 512Mb of memory in there or more) and the right software. It's no new Intel machine, but it could certainly be more useful than a doorstop.
 
i love my eMac and can't complain about its performance , its great , ok i maxed out the ram to full 2 gb ..which helps i guess a lot , but i found leopard a bit laggy on it:( , tiger in comparison is a rocket on it :D
 
first i would actually do a reinstall (if your prof hasn't done that)
then i would reset permissions , reset pram

on a eMac or any g3 ,g4, g5 mac i would use optimized camino browser
http://pimpmycamino.com/parts/g3-g4-g5-camino-by-rpmozley

reset permissions just after a re-install? snake oil. Perms should be correct on a clean install. Perms don't do much anyway. It's a placebo.

PRAM yes good idea.

What would be a better idea is to check for startup items in your user accounts.

The easiest way is to create a new user account from system preferences, system, accounts.
 
After looking at the title I thought to myself, "Arnt all eMacs sluggish by now??" :D

hmm is your iMac g4 sluggish ?:D


at least i dont think my eMac is sluggish ..at least not if i run tiger .. did hardly boot with leopard
eMac 1.42 / 2gb ram / 64 mb vram ati radeon 9600
 
hmm is your iMac g4 sluggish ?:D


at least i dont think my eMac is sluggish ..at least not if i run tiger .. did hardly boot with leopard
eMac 1.42 / 2gb ram / 64 mb vram ati radeon 9600

Yea I have Tiger installed on the 17" iMac G4 and surprisingly handles almost everything very well.

I can even watch youtube videos if I install click2flash and by right clicking on the youtube video (while it has the flash logo on the imbedded video) and choose "play video with quicktime".

It will open the quicktime app and play and stream the youtube from there and it runs smooth as butter. :D
 
My emac is got os 10.4.11 and is a power pc 4 1.42 mhz (i think ) I dont have the discs to do a clean install trust me I would like to. All I have are the upgrade dvds

Just want to point out that it would be 1.42 ghz not mhz. But you should look around on the internet for a tiger full install or the tiger restore discs for eMac witch also show up on ebay at times.
 
I use a 1.0 GHz, 512 mb, running 10.5.8 eMac at work. There are times I have to use the dell for some programs, but I love the eMac. You need to reinstall. If not that then check the account setting. Click to flash also helped Safari run much faster.

On a side note we have been trying out some netbooks at my school for next year Acer and Asus 1.6 GHz, 1 gb, 7 Starter (Not my choice). On everything but video playback the eMac is just as quick or quicker. Hard to believe and yes, I know, netbooks are at the bottom. But I was very impressed with my old machine compared to something brand new.
 
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