Powerbook 3400 Ram questions, advice needed

[springscansing]

Hey.. I just purchased a powerbook 3400 off of ebay with a new battery and a backup + leather case for $300, free shipping.

It's for my girlfriend for christmas, hehe.

It only has 48MB of ram on it. A 64 MB chip would bring it to 80MB (it has 16 internal plus one slot with a 32 in there now I'd have to remove) but it's a little expensive ($65 with shipping on ebay).

What I want to know is: For internet access and wordprocessing, is 48 MB of ram going to cut it?

What OS should I use? 7, 8, or 9? I was hoping I could run 9.2.2 so there will be no compatibility problems (she's a PC user, this will be her first mac!). However, is OS 9 going to guzzle down too much ram?

Also, I know enabling 1MB of virtual memory saves a lot of ram per application, but if I enabled to say, 32, so she'd have 80 "ram" total, would this cause a major performance hit? It's only a 603e remember...

Also, what browser and wordprocessor should I install on this thing? Can it handle Word 98? Is Word 2k1 better? More efficient?

I know that's a lot of stuff. Do your best, and thanks!

I hope she likes it.

- John

 

[King Cobra]

>Hey.. I just purchased a powerbook 3400 off of ebay . . . It only has 48MB of ram on it. A 64 MB chip would bring it to 80MB (it has 16 internal plus one slot with a 32 in there now I'd have to remove) but it's a little expensive ($65 with shipping on ebay).

>What I want to know is: For internet access and wordprocessing, is 48 MB of ram going to cut it?

First off, if you want to look for dirt cheap memory, check out www.18004memory.com and have a look at their prices. I'm not too sure how the site works for older computers, but it's worth a shot.

Another place to look for cheap memory would be www.dealtime.com if 1800 doesn't have what you are looking for.

>What OS should I use? 7, 8, or 9? I was hoping I could run 9.2.2 so there will be no compatibility problems (she's a PC user, this will be her first mac!). However, is OS 9 going to guzzle down too much ram?

When I had OS 8.5 on my iMac 233 it ran quite fast. But OS 9 seemed to bog things down. I suggest that you maximize your RAM to the best of your current financial status, or to 144MB, whichever is your top priority, especially if you are going to use OS 9. The one thing I would recommend doing is getting the heck out of System 7.

NOTE: The Powerbook 3400c is NOT compatible with OS 9.2.2. It works up to OS 9.1, when Apple supported many older systems for the last time. So that is as far as you are safely allowed to go.

>Also, I know enabling 1MB of virtual memory saves a lot of ram per application, but if I enabled to say, 32, so she'd have 80 "ram" total, would this cause a major performance hit? It's only a 603e remember...

I'm not too sure how Virtual Memory works. But when I tried it my iMac ran slower than w/o Virtual Memory.

>Also, what browser and wordprocessor should I install on this thing? Can it handle Word 98? Is Word 2k1 better? More efficient?

For a browser, I would recommend IE, since Communicator was a pain in the YKW to deal with.

As for what Microsoft Word app to use, Word 2001 requires Mac OS 8.5 or greater. I'm not sure what Word 98 requires, but I'm guessing that it's around the same OS. For more features, you probably want to go with Word 2001, but it may require more RAM and such, so I'm not exactly sure on this.

 

[applemacdude]

I have a PB 3400 225Mhz/2 Gig HD/144 Megs of Ram with 9.1 on it. I used to have 8.6 on it but i wanted to see what 9 is an my PB. 9 is a bit sluggish on mine but 8 is great.

 

[springscansing]

Thanks guys, I'll run 8.6.1 or whatever the last version of 8 is, heh.

Also... I'm REALLY strapped for cash. How much RAM will the system use under 8.6 on a 48MB system? If its 20 it's okie.. if it's 30 i might be in trouble.

 

[Falleron]

Go with OS 8.6. It is the best compromise for older machines. I use 8.6 on my 200Mhz Tower + it works great - this has only 32Mb of RAM but uses RAM Doubler to boost that to 64Mb. You may consider using that program instead of Virtual Memory because it is quicker + can reclame un-used RAM.