Vintage and obsolete G4 Powerbook

[bobesch]

@sallyanne1970:
Now you can choose at what place of the mac-evolution you may come to a halt for now...
1) your Powerbook is a PowerPC and Tiger will be the best option, but you can run most of the productivity stuff without any upgrading and go online via Ethernet without any extra-costs (except from the Office you've already purchased).
An upgrade would make the Powerbook faster: AirportExtreme Card (10£), 1GB RAM (10£) if you look for cheap sellers at the bay ... There's a lot of free software stuff for the old PowerPC and you are not bothered or distracted by any update-hassle. That's the Zen of old machines. A new battery will be at about 20£ and fully charged it will last for 4h on the go, since the processor is not that power-consuming. You will need the inbuilt optical drive only once: to install Tiger - maybe with some help by someone else's Mac you may do this via Firewire. There's only basic web-browsing, no Dropbox, no iCloud, no GoogleDrive but only email and basic webDAV as Cloud substitute. But you may send/receive a fax with the inbuilt modem (just plug in the phone-cord of any telephone).
2) the iBookG4 14" of elf69 is the top choice of white G4 iBooks and will speed things up a lot, sports Leopard, browsing is much better but somehow not up-to date. Still Dropbox via Hack, GoogleDrive sucks, YouTube video at 360p is possible with webkit-for-leopard plus extension and CorePlayer-videoplayer. Leopard resembles mostly the following versions of OS X, but OS and apps won't get any significant update or no updates at all.
3) the white MacBook of the Mac Emergency Repair guy is an intel-Mac. I think, you'll need Office 2008 to run.
Early white MacBooks have an Intel CoreDuo-Processor - max. OS X is 10.7 Lion.
Late white MacBooks have an Intel Core2Duo-Processor - max. OS X may be up to El Capitan.
It depends on the type and condition of the MacBook, the amount of RAM (1, 2 or max 4GB depending on type of MacBook) and kind and size of the disk-drive and if the optical drive is working, if the 150£ is a good price.
To check the display change the wallpaper to both solid-white and solid-black to see if there's color-bleeding at the edges or bad pixels. (Also check the Ethernet-port, Wifi, USB-ports and headphone jack too, to see, if none of them is broken. Sometimes there's the red light of death visible in the headphone jack causing the internal speakers of the Macbook not to work - so check the internal speakers too.)
You get an overview about the specs via Apple-Menu/About this Mac/SystemProfiler. If you really want to enjoy a higher OS than SL or Lion you'll need an intelCore2duo with 2.4GHz and 4GB of RAM; for 10.8 and above an SSD...
So everything depends on the specs of that white MacBook. You may read more about that white MacBook at everymac.com ...

 

[bobesch]

Or you may keep the Powerbook and go for another one, which will provide the missing optical-drive (but it needs also a firewire-socket) and could serve for backups too...

 

[elf69]

I even have a firewire DVD-RW drive, not being used.

 

[bobesch]

I even have a firewire DVD-RW drive, not being used.

Yep, one drive to rule them all!
I remember, when I got a Cube with a smoked up CD-drive, I was searching at the bay for a long time to find a cheap external optical firewire-drive for booting (I did know little about all that nice firewire-tricks until then), when I accidentally found exactly such a drive in a box with all forgotten old windows stuff here at my home, coming from a time, when I nearly knew nothing about firewire. Well, I think it had been a good purchase then ...

 

[sallyanne1970]

@sallyanne1970:
Now you can choose at what place of the mac-evolution you may come to a halt for now...
1) your Powerbook is a PowerPC and Tiger will be the best option, but you can run most of the productivity stuff without any upgrading and go online via Ethernet without any extra-costs (except from the Office you've already purchased).
An upgrade would make the Powerbook faster: AirportExtreme Card (10£), 1GB RAM (10£) if you look for cheap sellers at the bay ... There's a lot of free software stuff for the old PowerPC and you are not bothered or distracted by any update-hassle. That's the Zen of old machines. A new battery will be at about 20£ and fully charged it will last for 4h on the go, since the processor is not that power-consuming. You will need the inbuilt optical drive only once: to install Tiger - maybe with some help by someone else's Mac you may do this via Firewire. There's only basic web-browsing, no Dropbox, no iCloud, no GoogleDrive but only email and basic webDAV as Cloud substitute. But you may send/receive a fax with the inbuilt modem (just plug in the phone-cord of any telephone).
2) the iBookG4 14" of elf69 is the top choice of white G4 iBooks and will speed things up a lot, sports Leopard, browsing is much better but somehow not up-to date. Still Dropbox via Hack, GoogleDrive sucks, YouTube video at 360p is possible with webkit-for-leopard plus extension and CorePlayer-videoplayer. Leopard resembles mostly the following versions of OS X, but OS and apps won't get any significant update or no updates at all.
3) the white MacBook of the Mac Emergency Repair guy is an intel-Mac. I think, you'll need Office 2008 to run.
Early white MacBooks have an Intel CoreDuo-Processor - max. OS X is 10.7 Lion.
Late white MacBooks have an Intel Core2Duo-Processor - max. OS X may be up to El Capitan.
It depends on the type and condition of the MacBook, the amount of RAM (1, 2 or max 4GB depending on type of MacBook) and kind and size of the disk-drive and if the optical drive is working, if the 150£ is a good price.
To check the display change the wallpaper to both solid-white and solid-black to see if there's color-bleeding at the edges or bad pixels. (Also check the Ethernet-port, Wifi, USB-ports and headphone jack too, to see, if none of them is broken. Sometimes there's the red light of death visible in the headphone jack causing the internal speakers of the Macbook not to work - so check the internal speakers too.)
You get an overview about the specs via Apple-Menu/About this Mac/SystemProfiler. If you really want to enjoy a higher OS than SL or Lion you'll need an intelCore2duo with 2.4GHz and 4GB of RAM; for 10.8 and above an SSD...
So everything depends on the specs of that white MacBook. You may read more about that white MacBook at everymac.com ...

HELLO AGAIN BOBESCH...I went to check out the White MacBook and it was owned by an old man that very rarely used it, so in brilliant condition. The guys at Mac Emergency Repairs kindly upgraded the OS to OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.3. It's a 13-inch, Mid 2009 (not 2008 as originally was told). Processor is 2.13 GHz Itel Core 2 Duo with memory of 2GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256MB. Paid him £150 cos I thought was a bargain, cos he lives up the road and said any problems just pop back and they'll sort, so thought just that in itself was worth it. I showed him the 2004 Office:Mac CD that I purchased and arrived today and he said it shouldn't be a problem downloading it onto the new White MacBook. However, there seems to be a problem because I'm getting a message saying "You can't open the application because PowerPC applications are no longer supported"...any advice? It only cost me £12, so no big deal if it's useless, can use on the G4, as the guy didn't want to trade on the G4 at all, said it was only good for a doorstop poor G4. However, he said if I have no luck he can install Microsoft Office 2011 on the Mac for £20 for me. Appreciate your thoughts! (again!)...must be getting sick of the tirade of questions by now, sorry! Sally
[doublepost=1472655598][/doublepost]

Wow! thank you sooooo much for all the information. It doesn't have an Airport Card. The full spec on the invoice I have for it is: MAC12401 PB G4 867 256MG 40GB Combi 12" 56k LAN Blue Airport Extreme Ready 32MB GeForce4 420 Go Boots only into MacOS x 10.2.
I have a Mac Emergency Repair guy living nearby who is selling a White MacBook Snow Leopard OS 10.6 for £150. What do you think of this model and shall I trade the G4 in and pay £100? Going to look at it today.
[doublepost=1472634261][/doublepost]

Hey Dronecatche, I have a Mac Emergency Repair guy living nearby who is selling a White MacBook Snow Leopard OS 10.6 for £150. What do you think of this model and shall I trade the G4 in and pay £100? Going to look at it today.
[doublepost=1472634862][/doublepost]

I would love to keep the G4 but now needing an airport card to get online etc. thinking it might be good to upgrade? aahhh decisions decisions and cost of making those decisions!

HELLO AGAIN DRONECATCHER...I went to check out the White MacBook and it was owned by an old man that very rarely used it, so in brilliant condition. The guys at Mac Emergency Repairs kindly upgraded the OS to OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.3. It's a 13-inch, Mid 2009 (not 2008 as originally was told). Processor is 2.13 GHz Itel Core 2 Duo with memory of 2GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256MB. Paid him £150 cos I thought was a bargain, cos he lives up the road and said any problems just pop back and they'll sort, so thought just that in itself was worth it. I showed him the 2004 Office:Mac CD that I purchased and arrived today and he said it shouldn't be a problem downloading it onto the new White MacBook. However, there seems to be a problem because I'm getting a message saying "You can't open the application because PowerPC applications are no longer supported"...any advice? It only cost me £12, so no big deal if it's useless, can use on the G4, as the guy didn't want to trade on the G4 at all, said it was only good for a doorstop poor G4. However, he said if I have no luck he can install Microsoft Office 2011 on the Mac for £20 for me. Appreciate your thoughts! (again!)...must be getting sick of the tirade of questions by now, sorry! Sally
[doublepost=1472655711][/doublepost]Anybody want to buy my G4 PB complete with brand new USB disk reader (purchased yesterday from Maplins £34) as internal disk drive not working and can throw in 2004 Office:MAC CD to install?

 

[elf69]

Well sally you have the laptop just before mine.
Looks like you have a late model A1184, nice little machines.
It will run el capitan (free download in app store)
For full specs on your machine:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...-duo-2.13-white-13-mid-2009-nvidia-specs.html

I would upgrade to 4GB of ram minimum although it will take 6GB.

When you can afford it, slip an SSD in and you will notice the speed increase.

Until you get office sorted maybe try:
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-still/

Just make sure when you save to change extension to .doc/.xls/etc

 

[Dronecatcher]

However, there seems to be a problem because I'm getting a message saying "You can't open the application because PowerPC applications are no longer supported"...any advice?

Sounds like you got a good deal there Sally

Yes, it'll not like Office 2004 because it's for the older Macs - if the Macbook had 10.6 it would have "translated" the older program but your version, 10.10.3 no longer supports that feature.

You can either take up that install offer for £20 or go for a free download of Open Office, Libre Office etc

Doorstop indeed! Sad but that's what most people think - will still be useful to someone though

 

[CooperBox]

As designer doorstops, some PPC's are unbeatable!

 

[bobesch]

Hi Sally,

good deal, fair price - especially if you think about the option for service and questions being next door!
As the others said, 4GB RAM would be good, an SSD-drive even more and it will make the MacBook feel like a brandnew machine. But that's at the expense of another 150-200£. I've set up the same machine with 4GB RAM and a 500GB SSD for a friend of mine and I/she really liked the performance!
About Office: Office2008 will run nice on your Book. Look at http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...e+mac+2008.TRS0&_nkw=office+mac+2008&_sacat=0 for a good offer.
So you are lucky to have two Books now. Same combination I've set up for my son recently. An iBookG4 for on the go and the MacBook 2009 for working at home: there's webDAV for filesharing via Cloud, there's SOHO-Notes and/or MacJournal for keeping notes in Sync with PPC<>iPhone<>intelMac. And a bunch of free Apps for the PowerBook.
There are so many things you can use the PowerBook for:
- a small companion on the go (ok, it's not a lightweight)
- those productivity apps, I've mentioned above
- a fax machine
- an email-machine
- Radio for the kitchen (you can play radio-streams via iTunes, just look at the links at your favorite broadcast's hompages)
- watch DVD-videos with the attached external optical-drive
- set up a home-server with the PowerBook: attach a USB-drive and allow filesharing etc. Good fun to learn, how easy networking is. (The backlight can be completely dimmed)

I wouldn't sell neither the USB-optical drive (I'd use it with the MacBook for e.g. DVD's not to smoke up the internal drive of the Book while watching DVD-Films. An internal drive is much more expensive) nor the "Doorstop" if it's in good shape. It won't loose worth. And the 12£ for Office2004 was a good price too.

Oops, this doesn't work with your El Capitan machine, since it won't allow Tiger to be installed ton anywhere ... [Your white MacBook should sport a FireWire-socket, so you will be able to set-up the Powerbook with Tiger on your own.
Get a copy of Tiger from macintoshgarden.net. Make a bootable DVD. Connect the white MacBook and the Powerbook with a Firewire400 cable. Boot the white MacBook with your Tiger-DVD. Chose the connected Powerbook's hard drive for installing Tiger.]
So if you'll keep your certainly nice PowerBook, maybe the guy of the Mac Service Point might help you with an external optical firewire-drive...

Wish you a lot of fun with both of your devices!
Here's a teaser to keep your Powerbook... (My 12"Powerbook and MacBook2008 side-by-side)


Robert
[doublepost=1472661406][/doublepost]

As designer doorstops, some PPC's are unbeatable!
View attachment 647685

Oh, that's military-grade XLL "Hurricane-Proof" (maybe the only thing left in place after the storm is over....)

 

[sallyanne1970]

Feel so much better now having read all your feedback! Thanks again. Love this site!
Cooperbox your pic cracked me up, love it! Take care y'all.x

 

[Altemose]

As you said, for low specs Tiger would be the better option and maybe speed of browsing with TenFourFox and Tiger would be equal to webkit on Leopard?

TenFourFox is a Mozilla based browser and is going to be slower than WebKit on any OS. The benefit of Mozilla browsers is the customization, which is second to none. Even Chrome cannot match the large library of themes and extensions as well as the configurability of a Mozilla browser. For PPCs, you need to decide whether the extensions and security of TenFourFox is more important than the speed of WebKit. I find that Leopard WebKit is great, until you hit a site loaded with ads and scripts as there is little customization that can be done to control that.

Hey Dronecatche, I have a Mac Emergency Repair guy living nearby who is selling a White MacBook Snow Leopard OS 10.6 for £150. What do you think of this model and shall I trade the G4 in and pay £100? Going to look at it today.

I would keep the G4 for your personal sake or I am sure one of our members here would be interested.

Regarding browsing, no, I wouldn't say TFF on Tiger is same speed/faster than Webkit on Leopard - far from it but for everything else, Tiger is faster - as always, depends on your needs.

At least TenFourFox on both Tiger and Leopard is comparable in speed.

However, he said if I have no luck he can install Microsoft Office 2011 on the Mac for £20 for me.

Office 2011 is still a very current and up to date version that works great. However, if you are a student or a teacher, at least in the US, you may be eligible for a free Office 365 account which gets you Office 2016. I am not sure if the same applies across the pond.

The guys at Mac Emergency Repairs kindly upgraded the OS to OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.3. It's a 13-inch, Mid 2009 (not 2008 as originally was told).

A mid-2009 MacBook is the last of the pre-unibody design and is a pretty sweet machine. It is the only non-unibody WhiteBook to be able to natively run Yosemite! You got a sweet Mac!

 

[California]

Agreed on this.

2008 all the way for me.

In fact, I like 2008 so much that I have it installed on my main MBP

But Word 2008 can only run on Snow Leopard, correct? (I hope I am wrong...)

Also the original Word for OSX from 2001 is a spare, great version. 2004 was always the problem.

 

[bunnspecial]

But Word 2008 can only run on Snow Leopard, correct? (I hope I am wrong...)

Also the original Word for OSX from 2001 is a spare, great version. 2004 was always the problem.

I'm running 2008 on Mavericks now. I haven't tried it on newer versions.

It was a universal binary, and Lion was the current OS when Office 2011 came out.

 

[Imixmuan]

I'm running 2008 on Mavericks now. I haven't tried it on newer versions.

It was a universal binary, and Lion was the current OS when Office 2011 came out.

Another option to use Office 2004 on an Intel mac, which I don't believe anyone has mentioned,(thought it may be a bridge to far for the OP) is to install Leopard or Snow Leopard in Paralells or VM Ware or Virtual Box. You can still run PowerPC apps that way, albeit with a performance hit. Shouldn't be that big a deal with a Office app. edit Like this:

 

[bobesch]

But Word 2008 can only run on Snow Leopard, correct? (I hope I am wrong...)
Also the original Word for OSX from 2001 is a spare, great version. 2004 was always the problem.

Running Office2008 on El Capitan works fine. Latest update has to be downloaded manually, since AutoUpdate doesn't get the job done.
The lack of direct support of OneCloud can be compensated by using the OneCloud-App.
[doublepost=1473186362][/doublepost]

Another option to use Office 2004 on an Intel mac, which I don't believe anyone has mentioned,(thought it may be a bridge to far for the OP) is to install Leopard or Snow Leopard in Paralells or VM Ware or Virtual Box. You can still run PowerPC apps that way, albeit with a performance hit. Shouldn't be that big a deal with a Office app. edit Like this:

With latest VMware Fusion8 you'll need the Server-Versions of Leopard/SnowLeopard and there's no option to install Tiger without any tricks.
I guess you won't run Classic Apps in combination with Fusion/Tiger, since it might use the Intel-version of Tiger.
So presumably no Office2001 with this option.

If VirtualBox offers better options I definitely should give it a try ...

 

[WalnutSpice]

Why not Libre Office? It comes with it all, it's free and the latest PowerPC version is from around 2012/2013
[doublepost=1473265062][/doublepost]

A mid-2009 MacBook is the last of the pre-unibody design and is a pretty sweet machine. It is the only non-unibody WhiteBook to be able to natively run Yosemite! You got a sweet Mac!

The Early 2009 is the earliest non-unibody that can run 10.9-10.11. I'm on one now

 

[bunnspecial]

Why not Libre Office? It comes with it all, it's free and the latest PowerPC version is from around 2012/2013
[doublepost=1473265062][/doublepost]
The Early 2009 is the earliest non-unibody that can run 10.9-10.11. I'm on one now

LibreOffice is NOT MS office.

If you count on Office to get work done, LibreOffice/OpenOffice are really not a viable alternative. This is especially true if work involves exchanging documents with co-workers. The formatting gets messed up, and these programs lack a lot of the functionality that is needed.

Heck, we have some WordPerfect adherents in our department, and Nisus Writer(a great WP that is not free) really is the only viable way to exchange recent WP documents with co-workers.

 

[Imixmuan]

LibreOffice is NOT MS office.

If you count on Office to get work done, LibreOffice/OpenOffice are really not a viable alternative. This is especially true if work involves exchanging documents with co-workers. The formatting gets messed up, and these programs lack a lot of the functionality that is needed.

Heck, we have some WordPerfect adherents in our department, and Nisus Writer(a great WP that is not free) really is the only viable way to exchange recent WP documents with co-workers.

Amen. If everybody in the world switched at once to Open/Libre Office it would be fine. On principle I tried using Libre Office when I was teaching, when my students opened a file created in Libre Office they'd get a lovely warning window saying they were opening a "damaged or corrupt file that might harm your computer". Gee, thanks Microsoft. Want to try and explain why Microsoft would do something like that to a tech terrified twenty year old student? The fact remains if your work requires Office you need Office. If all you do in a word processor is write letters and work on resumes that you will print out and hand to people, Libre Office is the shizzy.

 

[bobesch]

Amen. If everybody in the world switched at once to Open/Libre Office it would be fine. On principle I tried using Libre Office when I was teaching, when my students opened a file created in Libre Office they'd get a lovely warning window saying they were opening a "damaged or corrupt file that might harm your computer". Gee, thanks Microsoft. Want to try and explain why Microsoft would do something like that to a tech terrified twenty year old student? The fact remains if your work requires Office you need Office. If all you do in a word processor is write letters and work on resumes that you will print out and hand to people, Libre Office is the shizzy.

I also can confirm that switching documents between Open/LibreOffice and MS Office very often leads to
unpredictable results.
So having installed both MS Office and Libre/OpenOffice on each of my Macs (PPC with Office2004 and 2008; intel with only Office2008) is helpful to be prepared for any sort of documents and related trouble ...
As for me I try to save all documents as MS Office 97-03 versions to be able to use them with Office2000 (Win), Office2001MacOS9, Office2004(PPC) and Office2008(PPC/intel-Macs). That reduces the unpredictable results as far as possible (most hassle is with presentations...)

Nevertheless VirtualBox is the next stuff I gonna try out!

 

[Dronecatcher]

My experience of MS OFfice, is that unless the recipient has the exact same version as yourself, the result on their screen will be a lottery.

One of my least favourite work phrases, "we need that as a Word document," usually followed by a futile attempt to find the qualification of that request....

 

[MagicBoy]

I'm running 2008 on Mavericks now. I haven't tried it on newer versions.

It was a universal binary, and Lion was the current OS when Office 2011 came out.

2008 works fine on 10.11. Installed it on my Mac mini when new and it's been upgraded through every version of OS X since without issues.

 

[Altemose]

As designer doorstops, some PPC's are unbeatable!

View attachment 647685

That is a Mac Pro acting as a door stop. Crazy how technology progresses from $3,000 machines one day to door stops the next.