Upgrading Powerbook G4 to Leopard

[UMHurricanes34]

I had the same notebook.

PowerBook G4 15" 1.5GHz 80GB but with 2GB of RAM

Ran Leopard wonderfully, I really really miss that machine. My first Mac. I'll never have the same connection with my new MBP.

Buy the RAM upgrades, they're super cheap these days and do a clean install and you'll be happy. I was fine with my stock 80GB.

 

[leodavinci0]

I'm runnng leopard just fine on the computer you see below. No problems for 1 year now. I do recommend a clean install as was suggested above.

 

[DoNoHarm]

get a new HD, not because it's essential, but because you can keep the old one as a backup in case something goes wrong.

Definately get the ram - it's essential to having a usable leopard system. less ram may run it, but you need the ram maxed out to have it run well IMHO. BTW, I've done this with a 1.25 Ghz PB G4 and I felt that the performance, with the new ram, was still barely adequate.

 

[DoNoHarm]

An even better idea.

acutally, in retrospect, why are you doing this upgrade? Think of it this way: you could just sell the G4 for ~700 on craigslist. Then take the 200 you'll be spending on a HD and ram and apply it to a new computer. You can get a refurb MBP Classic for something like 1400 off apple's web site. subtract your savings of 900, and for $500, you've bought a new Macbook Pro. Even if you dont' have tons of cash right now, You'll more than make up for the extra cash when you sell the MBP. In the long term, it makes sense to upgrade today!

Yes, I do get a comission from apple....

Seriously though, the old G4 will run HOT compared to the new MBP Classics due to the load Leopard will put on the processor. The battery won't last as long, and the screen sucks on the G4 (relatively speaking).

Let us know what you do!

 

[leodavinci0]

acutally, in retrospect, why are you doing this upgrade? Think of it this way: you could just sell the G4 for ~700 on craigslist. Then take the 200 you'll be spending on a HD and ram and apply it to a new computer. You can get a refurb MBP Classic for something like 1400 off apple's web site. subtract your savings of 900, and for $500, you've bought a new Macbook Pro. Even if you dont' have tons of cash right now, You'll more than make up for the extra cash when you sell the MBP. In the long term, it makes sense to upgrade today!

Yes, I do get a comission from apple....

Seriously though, the old G4 will run HOT compared to the new MBP Classics due to the load Leopard will put on the processor. The battery won't last as long, and the screen sucks on the G4 (relatively speaking).

Let us know what you do!

Leopard isn't the resource hog that people proclaim it to be. With 640 MB of RAM and an older 867 MHz processor my comp runs photoshop CS and handbrake for example just fine. Although I admit I'm not one for having more than 3 apps open at the same time.

Also, when I mean it runs Leopard fine, I mean in comparison to my wife's Macbook running Leopard. For example, delays in a spotlight search on my PB are about the same on her Macbook. Other OS functions are also similar. Although, her Macbook smokes my PB when it comes to running handbrake.

 

[DoNoHarm]

Leopard isn't the resource hog that people proclaim it to be. With 640 MB of RAM and an older 867 MHz processor my comp runs photoshop CS and handbrake for example just fine. Although I admit I'm not one for having more than 3 apps open at the same time.

Also, when I mean it runs Leopard fine, I mean in comparison to my wife's Macbook running Leopard. For example, delays in a spotlight search on my PB are about the same on her Macbook. Other OS functions are also similar. Although, her Macbook smokes my PB when it comes to running handbrake.

wow, that's impressive. do your icons at the bottom glide, magnify, and generally flow like water when you mouse over them? does your comp stay cool?

 

[leodavinci0]

wow, that's impressive. do your icons at the bottom glide, magnify, and generally flow like water when you mouse over them? does your comp stay cool?

It stays cool, with no fans running at all, while surfing the net (while using Opera and without visiting too many flash-filled sites) and listening to iTunes. Although, anytime I play video, doesn't matter what, the fans come on and blow hard. I should say, the other thing I did notice in difference to my wife's Macbook is when viewing files in coverflow it takes longer to load the icons. The icons in the dock magnify and flow like they did in Panther though.

I do remember when I first installed Leopard that iTunes skipped around. After restarting the comp twice this stopped and hasn't come back (I think it may have been from Spotlight indexing).

Note: I have no gadgets running. I found on a friends 867 MHz that his ran much slower because of all the gadgets he had running in the background.

 

[California]

Partitioning a drive does affect overall performance of a hard drive.

I read this first on xlr8yourmac or the Cube forums when addressing how to partition drives with the old 128gb cap on Macs.

They ran an extensive test on drives over 120 that were running on Macs with the cap and were partitioned...

I think they said that this hurt the drives because only a portion of the disc was accessed over and over again.

The result of the article was that the drives on these old macs that were OVER 120 gigs failed much faster.

I can attest to one thing. I had a 200 gig hard drive earlier this year that I had partitioned into three sections.

One for time machine, one a clone of my old Mac Mini, and one for Photoshop or something else, I can't remember.

FAIL.

It is not good for a drive. Sort of like wearing grooves into an old LP record. That's what the articles I read said....

Nonsense. There's absolutely no evidence to suggest this is true.

 

[TheReef]

Running on a Sawtooth G4, 450Mhz, 512MB of RAM, lags sometimes but really no problem being mainly an internet/mail computer.

Running on 1Ghz eMac G4 with 768MB RAM, works perfectly fine.

Running on a 1.5Ghz PowerBook G4 with 768MB RAM, even more perfectly fine.

Screaming on an old 1.8 Ghz G5.

As others have mentioned, disabling Dashboard (through Tinkertool) really does help, whatever the machine.