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Ordered a powerbook g4 (tibook) need help?

ppcfanforever1

ppcfanforever1

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hey i got a powerbook g4 titanium as a hobby computer, any applications or games recommended? Its an 800mhz with 1gb of ram. Oh and happy new years! From 2013. Im new here so also whats up guys? 😀
 
Hello and happy new year! Congratz on getting a g4, you could use some apps like canmino for g4 browser, vlc, utorrent(earlier version for g4), mactubes for youtube videos without lagging etc, as for games i cannot tell, i dont play games on mine 🙂
 
ppcfanforever1 said:
Hey i got a powerbook g4 titanium as a hobby computer, any applications or games recommended? Its an 800mhz with 1gb of ram. Oh and happy new years! From 2013. Im new here so also whats up guys? 😀
Click to expand...

Welcome to Macrumors, ppcfan.

I'm afraid your new hobby computer will be a bit under spec'd.

OS X Leopard requires an 867 MHz or more processor to *install* it. I hope the seller sold it to you with Leopard on it already.

Otherwise, you'll likely be getting OS X Tiger (My favorite OS X actually), but support isn't so great anymore.

For a browser I recommend Camino, since you'll be on Tiger. On Leopard and Mountain Lion, I prefer Safari.

I use transmission for bittorent, Adium for IM (iChat is just fine too, I just like Adium because its a *cute* application).

You'll want to pick up a copy of iLife that will run on your system, for iPhoto and etc.

I use iWork, not sure if that is available on Tiger however. Office 2004 was my favorite version for OS X.
 
cyberghoser1 said:
Hello and happy new year! Congratz on getting a g4, you could use some apps like canmino for g4 browser, vlc, utorrent(earlier version for g4), mactubes for youtube videos without lagging etc, as for games i cannot tell, i dont play games on mine 🙂
Click to expand...

Also don't forget to set the player in Mactubes to Quicktime.
 
76ShovelHead said:
I'm afraid your new hobby computer will be a bit under spec'd.

OS X Leopard requires an 867 MHz or more processor to *install* it. I hope the seller sold it to you with Leopard on it already.

Otherwise, you'll likely be getting OS X Tiger (My favorite OS X actually), but support isn't so great anymore.
Click to expand...

I had an 800mhz TiBook w/ 1gb RAM last year & it ran Leopard like a dream. It seems like Leopard (on low-end Macs) needs & prioritises RAM usage over CPU usage. To test this theory I stripped the RAM in my dual 1.8 G5 down to 512mb and it was terribly slow - unusable. And that's with relatively powerful CPU's too.

Anyway, to the OP - I definitely recommend installing Leopard if you have a copy of it somewhere. To install Leopard on a <867mhz CPU you'll need to use LeopardAssist. As for a browser I used Safari with ClickToFlash & AdBlock (as I find Safari is the best all round package). 240p YouTube is doable in the browser. But like others have said - I recommend MacTubes w/ Quicktime. As for games - I ran Halo, World Of Goo & Worms 3d relatively well on low-medium settings with the mobility radeon 7500.
 
cyberghoser1 said:
So true, forgot that one! 😛 And Camino all the way even in Leopard, with safari i got so much mouse wheel and force close, Camino for FTW!
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I agree, Camino is very lightweight and my favorite browser for PowerPC macs but unfortunately it doesn't render some pages correctly.
 
AQUADock said:
I agree, Camino is very lightweight and my favorite browser for PowerPC macs but unfortunately it doesn't render some pages correctly.
Click to expand...

Its quite strange, on my iBook, which is very limited compared to my hi-res powerbook, safari does not crash or stuck at mouse wheel, using safari, i dont understand yet why...but camino is working great on my pb, rendering is great and the built-in ad blocker is just fine.
 
Camino, Camino, Camino.

Camino's a great browser, but there are others besides Camino and Safari. At the top of this forum is a sticky. Has pages of posts in it. There are quite a few alternative browsers that you may find appealing. I'll just mention a few here. One of the big one's, TenFourFox which is Firefox for 10.4/10.5 users. Aurorafox (which I use) is Firefox for 10.5 users. Then you've got iCab, Omniweb, Radon, Roccat, Sunrise, Stainless (lots of people like that one), Opera (but only up to 10.70), Shiira, Seamonkey, etc. Another is Fluid, which you can use to generate a site-specific browser.

There's a bunch of apps out there that all of us have found for various needs and uses so if you have a specific need, just ask. We could all posts lists of the apps that reside in our applications folders but many of them would need explanations.

As to OSX, my vote would be Leopard. I was running it on an old TiBook/400 (half the mhz of what you have) with 1GB ram and it ran fine. My son runs Leopard on his 1Ghz TiBook, also with 1GB ram and it's also fine. More ram always makes Leopard run better.
 
Thanks for all the replies wow more people are hanging tight to the ppc community than i thought! So what i got from your posts is camino, which version the g4 optimized or the original? I dont like tenfourfox its too slow booting and ive experienced weird crashes same with safari so ill stick with camino. And for leopard i own the ppc boxed version, would it be slow at all? In my experience it slows down after a while, is it how i use it? I also agree with mactubes love that software have it on my emac and lombard atm. What version of utorrent and vlc do you recommend cause the last time i used utorrent it was on my old g5 that i sold and it was pretty slow, i used the latest release. Does anybody know of a good ftp client because every time i want to ftp into my xbmc xbox (original, i hate the 360) i need to turn on a cruddy pc. Thanks for the games if you can think of more id be great. Oh and if i didnt say it already thanks for being so active on a ppc forum! 😀 sorry for the paragraph alot to cover...
 
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Another easy way to install leopard is to put it in a different PowerPC Mac that is capable of the install and transplanting it into the tibook. I was able to boot my albook's drive from my tibook which is the same as yours.

You also have one of the fastest laptops capable of booting os9. if you install tiger you can even keep the two in the same partition. OS 9 games are really great to play on that machine as well as old photoshop versions and music composition software.
 
@76ShovelHead
As for you... Its not underpowered its powerful enough to run leopard through leopard assist. I agree with tiger loosing alot of support its pretty sad its still a great os though, my schools overused the os though... 6 years an still had tiger lol. I prefer camino aswell but have wondered if anybody has created a in browser download client kinda like safari on the new os. Oh and thanks i love this community already! 😛

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@crewkid89
I wasnt aware of this i thought the last os9 supported machine was late g3, thanks man! I only have 40gb and im not going to have room for everything i want to have. I was planning on having ubuntu, tiger, leopard, and os9. I wish i had the money to get a bigger ata drive :/ i guess ill have to wait on wait on ubuntu, its a pain the arse to install on ppc anyways.
 
Actually what is strange with safari is on google pictures, i mean if i make a search in google pictures the time it takes to open and mouse wheel appears is just ridiculous, it actually opens heavy websites fine but in google...very strange
 

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