Does anyone still use a 17" PowerBook G4? Just wondering. I took my mint 1.67Ghz 2GB RAM one out of the collection to play with it today. Actually using it right now, and BOY does each keystroke lag by like 3 seconds lol. Bought this one in excellent shape AS IS untested fr $70 almost 2 years ago. Hoping it was an easy fix if it was broken as I bought a similar one the month before that the keyboard only half way worked. This one powered up but I heard a constant clicking from the hard drive. Swapped it with the broken keyboard one and it works perfectly! What a score. I was thinking of selling my G4 collection soon and was shocked to see some 17" ones on eBay for nearly $800! I just bought an M1 MacBook Pro so was thinking of selling these old ones to pay for it but I like this one so much. Wanted one so bad when I was a kid. Anyone still hanging on to theirs for nostalgia? Or even use it to this day? Not sure how you would as TenFourFox is so slow, its getting hot just typing this lol. I guess maybe a Linux distro but that kind of ruins it to me, and things like the backlit keyboard probably dont work right.
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Still using a 17" PowerBook G4?
- Thread starter M3Stang
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I use my 12", 15" and 17" daily for irc, discord, twitch, youtube, and light browsing. The 17" and 15" run linux though. The 12" runs Leopard. Back lit keyboard and media keys do work on linux. Just no suspend/resume unless you go with something using the older 3.x kernel.
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Turn off the JavaScript-burdened editor and be surprised at how much better it gets.
Click “…” to the left of the Preview button and then the two brackets.
17" PowerBook G4 (especially the later ones) are still good machines just not for (extensive) web browsing. I use Leopard on my A1107 PowerBook for tasks like word processing, video playback (even HD) and light web browsing. What I love some much about those machines are their repairability, keyboard and screen (I actually swapped the defective A1107 screen on mine for a higher res A1139 screen). If I were you I'd keep it and use it for not too demanding tasks or to experiment and check out different operating systems like Linux and the Snow Leopard Beta.
IMHO that’s just some greedy sellers hoping to rip off some not-well-versed buyers. Check sold listings for realistic prices.
I've been meaning to ask about that. How would one use a 3.x kernel in Void Linux? I'm assuming you'd have to compile it yourself.
@Amethyst1 has it right.Turn off the JavaScript-burdened editor and be surprised at how much better it gets.
OP, it's not the PowerBook. It's the modern web. And you are probably browsing with the default stock TenFourFox. There are two stickied threads in this forum that deal with making T4Fx faster. But at a bare minimum you should be using either uMatrix or NoScript to get rid of the third party website trackers and analytics.
You'd be surprised at just what's out there. And MacRumors is no saint either. What Amethyst told you to do is because there is Javascript continuously running in the background on the off chance that you're going to be using the rich text editor. It does not turn off unless you shut if off and your PB is processing that continuously.
MR is light in comparison to a lot of other places.
On my first-gen iPhone SE with its original battery, that JS editor can hammer it like there’s no tomorrow.
I'll see if maybe I can get some pics of mine later tonight. It's been sleeping the summer off in the garage and given that I haven't been out there because of the mess it's pretty much gone unused for several months.
Thatd be the best bet and thats if void is even capable of using a kernel that old. Would be curious if one were to experiment with that what the results would be.
Although he didn’t mention it, you ought to give @wicknix ’s fork of TenFourFox, InterwebPPC, a go. And if you want even less of a browsing drag on your system from resource-intensive advertising, installing the add-ons uBlock Origin Legacy and uMatrix to InterwebPPC (or even TenFourFox) can help go a long way to make browsing on your PowerBook a less sluggish experience.
Over here, I’m still using my 17-inch and 15-inch PowerBook G4s (also 1.67GHz) daily (one of them, in fact, for testing experimental software). While they’re no speed demons compared alongside a Silicon Mac, they still hold their own remarkably well. Audio editing and imaging software still do quite nicely on them.
I love them for Logic 8. I have a couple of PowerMac G5s that run it too, and a PowerMac G4.
I would just add that OP should choose between uBlock Origin and uMatrix. uMatrix has uBlock Origin's base features (both are made by the same dev) plus additional tools so installing both just ends up duplicating features.
Unless you were just meaning to give OP a choice between the two, of course…
Either/or, or both, depending on the kind of granularity of filtering control on selected web sites that one wants to have.
I use them as companions, as uBlock Origin does well with broad stuff (courtesy of the block list subscriptions selectable in pref settings), and it also does well with letting you quickly pick and remove elements within a particular page. If anything, uBlock Origin is the best starting point for just getting online, especially on older gear. uMatrix offers a granular interface which helps to make sense at a glance what a particular page is calling from both within and outside that domain/server.
Put another way: I suppose the best way to describe how I use these together is uBlock Origin is my subtractive filtering go-to tool (removing a lot of the junk/guff on a commercial, ad-heavy web sites), while uMatrix is my additive go-to tool (i.e., only green-lighting media elements I do want to see on a page, such as approving the third-party media servers for viewing a page’s inline video or audio). And now I have actually used the word “guff” without a hint of irony.
I’m surprised nobody here has mentioned the Leopard-WebKit browser yet. It’s quite nice for most web browsing and makes even my 867MHz G4 quite usable on the web, with Discord and 360p YouTube working great in full screen.
Hmmm…
I'm using uMatrix in a blacklist type mode. Meaning, everything third party is automatically blocked. I then just click 'All' to get the stuff related to the website approved (if I need to) and approve others (granurally) if I need to. Generally, if I'm visiting a site only once I don't click the lock button (to save the website prefs).
I guess I just see that as replicating uBlock Origins features. uMatrix just does it in a more detailed way. Not saying your method is wrong.
I think that's because OP mentioned they were using TenFourFox.
LWK is great, particularly with speed. Not so great with customizing it with addons and other features.
The principal downside to using LWK in late 2021 is its last security update occurred in 2018. By contrast, with TFF and, now, InterwebPPC, there are still fairly regular security updates based on Mozilla’s Firefox itself, keeping that component of browsing up to speed. Yes, LWK/Safari is fast, but there is that trade-off. And, as well, what @eyoungren said about a lack of LWK add-on support for customizing the use-experience.
Basically, by whichever methodology that works best for your workflow and/or the way your brain is wired, it’s valid if it gets the job done — not unlike how there may be a half-dozen approaches to produce the same desired outcome with an image in Photoshop (me, thinking back to the old CDs who’d never once touched Photoshop back in the late ’90s but still wanted the drum-scanned transparency to look a particular way for the ad or circular).
Yep…still alive. And silent (thanks to the SSD).
Oh. IGNORE the mess!!!!!
Running on original battery?
That keyboard looks gorgeous... Ant the power button... ?
If you paint a notch a not on it, you might get away as having a supercharged M1 Max.