PowerBook G4 - System or Hardware Issues??

[niklG4]

To all you knowledgeable Mac owners out there... I need some help diagnosing some issues I'm having with my PowerBook G4 which I purchased November of 2005! It's served me well for 5 years but it's starting to present some issues...

1) I was generously gifted with an iPad yesterday... as you all know, here is problem number one since it is not compatible with my G4's 10.4.11 OS. Question: Worth it to spend the money to upgrade to Leopard without the guarantee that my PowerBook has the "power" to actually RUN the system efficiently (it runs slow currently with 10.4)???

2) This software issue doesn't address the problem I'm having with what I think is my hardware... whenever I have my external hard drive or a thumb drive hooked up to my G4 it runs okay for about 5 minutes before it gives me a " '!' Device was removed unexpectedly" even though the hard drive is still plugged in... This message is followed by my cursor freezing on screen and then I get the colored, spinning wheel of death before it completely freezes. I have to force shut down and remove the battery for 5 minutes before I can reboot and actually get the mouse to move away from the upper left hand corner (where it shows up when my computer is restarted). Hardware problem??

Ultimately, I need to know whether it's worth it to pump a few hundred dollars into upgrading a computer that may be nearing the end of it's life. Really don't want to drop the cash but at the same time... I want to seamlessly sync my iPad and computer!

Specs:
CPU Speed: 1.67 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz

Your expert opinions would be greatly appreciated. Apologies for the novel...

 

[alust2013]

At this point, it would be better to retire the PowerBook to backup duty, and pick up a new machine, if possible. Spending money to fix it now would be a little risky, in that it could be quite expensive, or decide to die shortly after getting fixed and the new OS, etc. You would be impressed at how fast one of the new Apple laptops is compared to the G4.

Also, as a side note, that is basically the nicest PB that they made, so you could still get a bit for it should you decide to sell it

 

[Intell]

Even though it's a top of the line G4 Powerbook, I say its time to replace it. The USB problem is the tipping point in my opinion.

 

[occams razor]

My power book I had was also gifted to me. When I first received it, it was acting similar to how you desricbe yours. Shortly after starting to use it full time the hard drive went out. Mainly do to the fact that the hard drive is in the lower right corner and that's where I always picked it up with one hand. After rePlacing the hard drive and a fresh install of osx 10.4.11 it ran like a champ eventhough it was a 867mhz.


Moral of the story reinstall osx and see how it works

 

[tom vilsack]

i would try a reinstall of tiger

however first...have you tryed running disk utility and doing a

-verify disk permissions (and if needed) repair disk permissions
-verify disk (and if needed) repair disk

tiger should run pretty good on your powerbook G4...heck it runs not to bad on my ibook G3