my new powerbook, upgrade hard drive?

[kevin242]

After searching for a while I found a reasonably priced Powerbook aluminum 15" 1.25ghz g4 on Craigslist.

I ordered a blue tooth mouse, upgraded the OS to Leopard, installed tenfour fox and it's really a great experience overall, but the hard drive is slow. For example if I click a folder it will take a noticeable amount of time for it to display the files in it also it seems to take just a bit too long to boot up. Will upgrading the memory from 1gb to 2gb have much effect on performance? How difficult is it to replace the hard drive? I am looking for something cheaper and faster, but not an ssd drive (unless you can get one under 100 dollars, which i dont think you can).

Any other advice regarding improving performance would be appreciated. Software or otherwise.



thanks!!

 

[cocacolakid]

2 gb of ram on almost any Mac will make a huge improvement over 1 gb.

As for software, the typical group of G4 specific software that makes a big difference are the two browsers, TenFourFox and Camino, both have specific builds for your CPU and run laps around the other browsers (TenFourFox is actually Firefox 4 and can run HTML5 and all the other goodies). You want the 7450 build for your PB.

MacTubes for playing Youtube videos. MPlayer for playing videos on your hard drive.

 

[burnout8488]

Any modern 7200RPM drive with a nice fat cache will net you a noticable difference IMO... assuming your factory drive is a 4200 or 5400.

Are PB G4s SATA or PATA?...My guess is PATA which might drive the price up but you might be able to find a good 80-120gb on craigslist for $30-40.

 

[qzxyu]

And replacing the drive is a breeze. My old Powerbook G4 was my first experience changing out a drive and I did it in about 30 minutes with a couple videos from youtube.

 

[Bloodstar]

MPlayer for playing videos on your hard drive.

I do have to ask - is there much difference between Mplayer and VLC? I've generally had better luck with VLC (getting a gray screen on my iBook G4 (1.33ghz) with a 256x224 H.264 video, yet VLC runs it at a full 60FPS or so it appears), and the CPU usage between the two is roughly the same.

 

[AdrianK]

I do have to ask - is there much difference between Mplayer and VLC? I've generally had better luck with VLC (getting a gray screen on my iBook G4 (1.33ghz) with a 256x224 H.264 video, yet VLC runs it at a full 60FPS or so it appears), and the CPU usage between the two is roughly the same.

Btw, your video is likely between 23.976 and 30 FPS, the only consumer level encoded at 60 FPS is HDTV. </off topic>

 

[cocacolakid]

I do have to ask - is there much difference between Mplayer and VLC? I've generally had better luck with VLC (getting a gray screen on my iBook G4 (1.33ghz) with a 256x224 H.264 video, yet VLC runs it at a full 60FPS or so it appears), and the CPU usage between the two is roughly the same.

Have you tried setting MPlayer to Zen.State's recommended settings in his thread I linked to above? Try that and see if there's a noticeable difference in CPU usage and playback.

 

[Bloodstar]

Btw, your video is likely between 23.976 and 30 FPS, the only consumer level encoded at 60 FPS is HDTV. </off topic>

No, it actually is 60FPS - it's a video I recorded myself from another one of my machines. (SNES gameplay, to be specific...)

Have you tried setting MPlayer to Zen.State's recommended settings in his thread I linked to above? Try that and see if there's a noticeable difference in CPU usage and playback.

I'm using the recommended settings - no dice.

Would container format make a difference? The video in question is an AVI.

Apologies for veering the topic off-course a bit - but it could help with performance and issues for one of the aforementioned apps...