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andypress

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 19, 2003
197
0
Buffalo, NY
I'm looking to buy an older 400mhz G4 powerbook, and I was wondering how 10.3 would run on a laptop of this speed with at least 384mb of ram. Will it be slow, or would I not notice mcuh of a slow down? Also, I'm wondering how full screen divx & xvid playback will be. Thanks.
 

Flowbee

macrumors 68030
Dec 27, 2002
2,943
0
Alameda, CA
I'm running 10.3 on a Pismo (firewire) G3/400 Powerbook and it actually runs quite well. I would recommend at least 512mb RAM and upgrading to a 5400rpm hard drive for best performance.

Full screen video isn't a problem. I might get a stutter once in a while, but it mostly runs nice and smooth.

I love my Pismo, but at this point you might want to also take a look at a refurb G4 iBook, which will certainly last you longer than the G3. If you can handle the price difference, it's probably a much better value.
 

blue&whiteman

macrumors 65816
Nov 30, 2003
1,210
0
vlc and mplayer are altivec optimized so any G4 cpu will play stutter free video. also, osx is altivec optimized as well. go for it.
 
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