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The $46 PowerBook thread - post pics
- Thread starter KevinRightWing
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I have one of these 100 percent mint I bought in Feb. 2005. Obviously, I don't use it for anything. I play with it maybe once a year.
The disk drive seems to slow it down the most if you can believe that. I think it would be halfway useable with a SSD.
The disk drive seems to slow it down the most if you can believe that. I think it would be halfway useable with a SSD.
I have a 12" 1.5ghz(early 2005) with an mSATA SSD. I actually didn't put the SSD in-I bought it that way.
It's a speed demon. My 15" DLSD Powerbook(even back when it still had a platter drive in it) beats it to heck in raw horsepower, but the 12" is very responsive and very much useable with the SSD.
There's a noticeable difference between my SSD-equipped one and the one I bought in this thread.
Yeah, I don't know if maybe the drive has even slowed down in mine over the years as it really seems to be the weak point. It looks like a massive job to swap drives though, and my machine is so mint I would hate to do it. About 3 years ago I bought a brand new battery for the machine from Apple directly. It's probably not in the best shape anymore, it was two years old when Apple shipped it to me.
These were fantastic computers though in terms of design. $1700 I think too. Back in the day, it was paired with the 20-inch cinema display and my main computer until January 2006 when I got the first intel imac.
2005 was a bad time to buy one because the intel leap was so close, but it's still one of my all time favorite computers. There is just something special about it. The little magnetic latch while often a weak point on them, was cool too. All the ports were just gorgeous.
I tried to replicate the size in 2010 by buying the first 11-inch air. I still have it. It's great, but it was a bad time to buy that too. They were significantly slower in generation one than in 2011.
Update, the thread made me get out the PowerBook. Modern webpages kill it. The OS and whatnot isn't so slow. The web must be a lot more complex than in 2005. One cool use if you're running an OS X that has Screen Sharing on the PowerBook, connect to your fastest mac today in the house with screen share. Then you can still do things at a very fast speed, while manipulating it from the old Powerbook. ha.
It feels pretty heavy after using Apple products of today.
These were fantastic computers though in terms of design. $1700 I think too. Back in the day, it was paired with the 20-inch cinema display and my main computer until January 2006 when I got the first intel imac.
2005 was a bad time to buy one because the intel leap was so close, but it's still one of my all time favorite computers. There is just something special about it. The little magnetic latch while often a weak point on them, was cool too. All the ports were just gorgeous.
I tried to replicate the size in 2010 by buying the first 11-inch air. I still have it. It's great, but it was a bad time to buy that too. They were significantly slower in generation one than in 2011.
Update, the thread made me get out the PowerBook. Modern webpages kill it. The OS and whatnot isn't so slow. The web must be a lot more complex than in 2005. One cool use if you're running an OS X that has Screen Sharing on the PowerBook, connect to your fastest mac today in the house with screen share. Then you can still do things at a very fast speed, while manipulating it from the old Powerbook. ha.
It feels pretty heavy after using Apple products of today.
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Safari for Tiger/Leopard is all but useless on the web now.
Download Tenfourfox and/or Leopard Webkit, and you'll likely find that your web experience improves a lot.
Download Tenfourfox and/or Leopard Webkit, and you'll likely find that your web experience improves a lot.
I hope everybody here understands that these are 10-11 year old laptops. Dont get your hopes too high expecting perfect working order. The scratches, or wear marks, or dings, are to be expected. If you got a perfect one, then fantastic, but I hope nobody holds their breath for a mint one. Also, after all this time, I feel its really unfair to be upset about a shot battery. I would be surprised if any of the batteries worked even somewhat decently.
Also keep in mind that ebay reputation is VERY important to sellers. Its everything to them. I ask that you dont leave neutral or bad feedback unless it truly is deserved. Most sellers will do everything they can to avoid a neg feedback, since it tarnishes their reputation.
If your unhappy with the condition of the powerbook you got, look carefully at the auction, what exactly was claimed?
No, I'm not the seller here, but I have sold on ebay in the past, so I know how it feels to be one.
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I agree, Tenfourfox all the way. Its actively in development, and as fully updated as is possible on ppc. Its the only browser I would even consider for any OSX powermac I own.
Also keep in mind that ebay reputation is VERY important to sellers. Its everything to them. I ask that you dont leave neutral or bad feedback unless it truly is deserved. Most sellers will do everything they can to avoid a neg feedback, since it tarnishes their reputation.
If your unhappy with the condition of the powerbook you got, look carefully at the auction, what exactly was claimed?
No, I'm not the seller here, but I have sold on ebay in the past, so I know how it feels to be one.
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I agree, Tenfourfox all the way. Its actively in development, and as fully updated as is possible on ppc. Its the only browser I would even consider for any OSX powermac I own.
The modern web has become grossly inefficient. To give you an example...my brother works for a local casino as a slot manager. One of his responsibilities is to ensure the slot machines on the floor are not running any revoked code (code that contains bugs which could affect game play).
In order to do this he has to know what code has been revoked. The state provides a revocation list which he can download in HTML format. That HTML file is essentially a web page consisting of a single table which lists things such as the manufacturer, slot machine name, code revisions (there's multiple type of code running in a modern slot machine, etc). It's not a very complex listing basically a text based listing in a table format. No fancy formatting.
In an effort to automate the comparison from this list to what he has on the floor he decided to parse the file and have the computer perform the comparisons. This turned out to be more difficult than it needed as the HTML file is jam packed full of worthless HTML formatting. What should really be a single table is really table nested within table nested within tables and all kinds of extraneous HTML tags.
To illustrate how much waste there is in this file the HTML file provided to him is 23MB in size. If one highlights the output of this text file from the browser and copies it into a text file the size of that text file is 4MB. The as supplied HTML file is 600% larger than the data it displays...that's all hidden HTML formatting within the HTML file. Not only is the file size unnecessarily large but parsing that file is unnecessarily complex. There is absolutely no reason for this information to contain anything more than some basic HTML code and one table. This needlessly complex HTML file requires more CPU power to parse. On a modern system it takes an unreasonable amount of time (couple of minutes) just to load it into a web browser. I can imagine what it would take on a G4 based system.
So why is this file so large? Simple: Tools which automate web development and generate poor quality HTML. While tools are necessary to develop today's complex web site they do a poor job of optimization.
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That is a great look at reality today reco2011. Thanks.
Also my thanks to those who recommended TenFourFox, it did make a BIG difference.
The last iPhoto for this machine still runs great on it too. They truly were cool computers.
Also my thanks to those who recommended TenFourFox, it did make a BIG difference.
The last iPhoto for this machine still runs great on it too. They truly were cool computers.
I find stock installs of TFF to be a bit "pokey" even on a good computer(like the dual core 2.0 G5 I'm typing this from).
With that said, eyeyougren wrote a great post here recently about tweaking the about:config to make it work a LOT better. I'd suggest following his advice, as it will make your web experience even better.
And, I say all the above not to fault Cameron Kaiser or anyone else involved in the TFF project. They do an admirable and fantastic job at keeping our PPC computers relevant on the web. Tweaking the browser to your system helps things out a LOT, however.
Thanks!!
The machine also got faster after a hour or so. I suppose it was indexing for spotlight and doing other tasks after being powered down so long.
Thanks!!
There's a very good chance of that being the case...
Many folks on here advise turning spotlight off for this exact reason. I experimented for a while on my Quicksilver, but found that once it was fully indexed the performance hit was minimal and I really missed having it. I turned it back on last weekend.
The computer was painfully slow right after I turned spotlight back on, but after letting it run overnight it was more or less back to normal performance.
By the way, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and max the RAM out to 1.25gb. A 1gb DDR PC-2700(or PC-3200) SO-DIMM will run you about $10 on Ebay and can make a surprising performance difference in these computers. Leopard likes as much RAM as it can get.
Will this memory suit these powerbooks?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1GB-1024MB-...320?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ada5a9c98
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1GB-1024MB-...320?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ada5a9c98
Yes, that will work fine...just bear in mind that it may take you a couple of weeks to get it.
With that said, I ordered some from a US-based seller over the weekend, and it still hasn't shipped thanks to the Northeast Blizzard.
That's not a problem, maybe I'll even have my powerbook by then.
Actually it's the free international shipping that is attractive, the shipping costs from the USA to me in Canada sort of defeats the good prices.
Awesome confirmation on the Spotlight. Oddly, Spotlight is slow on my current Mac and iOS devices, I thought it was once "boom."
I had it up to 1.25GB memory in 2006 I think. I was always envious of the 12-inch iBooks that got one final update with 512 built in, allowing for a max of 1.5.
I played with it more this morning. The Pages of the last update, maybe 2007, works beautifully on it too. iPhoto and Pages were truly great on it still. Plus, I opened iTunes, and with streaming, I was able to pull any song off my main mac via iTunes. It's amazing all these features work when they were talking to OS 5 generations apart. The Screen Sharing blew me away too.
Ironically enough, I don't use Spotlight all that often on my newer Macs, but on my 10.4 and 10.5 systems it pretty much is instantaneous.
TFF opens, loads, and runs faster on my DP 2.3GHz G5 than google chrome on my MacBook Pro
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Well it depends where you ordered it from around here, if you ordered it from northern New England, then you will have to wait awhile... If you ordered it from NY, NJ, PA, DA, or ML, you should have a slight delay, but nothing too long.
Well much as I mentioned in an earlier post, this thread is all but dead even before I received my 12" PowerBook.
But I'll post my photos anyhow.
My unit arrived today Feb 2nd and overall is in pretty good shape for a less then $50 apple powerbook.
Almost no scratches or finish rubs, just a small indication that it has suffered a bit of abuse on the right front corner.
The battery is excellent, 3hrs + and still going.
Just might replace my old favorite 15" powerbook, especially after I max out the ram.
Guess I'll have to leave positive feedback for the seller.
But I'll post my photos anyhow.
My unit arrived today Feb 2nd and overall is in pretty good shape for a less then $50 apple powerbook.
Almost no scratches or finish rubs, just a small indication that it has suffered a bit of abuse on the right front corner.
The battery is excellent, 3hrs + and still going.
Just might replace my old favorite 15" powerbook, especially after I max out the ram.
Guess I'll have to leave positive feedback for the seller.
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I'm real glad you got a good one- you waited long enough! Mine has that bulging too. I wonder if they all got dropped or what causes that bulging. Sounds like you got a good battery too!
I have personally found Leopard webkit about twice as fast as Tenfourfox for loading pages, but more importantly - website interaction. Thing like clicking and scrolling are far more responsive under webkit. The downside is high RAM usage. I recommend maxing the ram in your system if you plan to use modern webkit.
Other tips to improve your web browsing speed:
- Uninstall Flash. You don't need it for youtube anymore, and most websites do well without it. It tends to slow things down.
- Install Glimmerblocker. It blocks ads without integrating with the browser by using a proxy. Depending on the site, it can quadruple loading times! I would recommend against using adblock plugins on these slow G4 systems. Although they remove ads, they tend to slow things down.
Other tips to improve your web browsing speed:
- Uninstall Flash. You don't need it for youtube anymore, and most websites do well without it. It tends to slow things down.
- Install Glimmerblocker. It blocks ads without integrating with the browser by using a proxy. Depending on the site, it can quadruple loading times! I would recommend against using adblock plugins on these slow G4 systems. Although they remove ads, they tend to slow things down.
I think TenFourFox feels slower due to the fact that it uses more CPU. It is not Cameron Keiser's fault but rather the piggish nature of the code from Mozilla Firefox originally.