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Will 10.5 run on a PowerBook G4?

gumbyx84

gumbyx84

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 7, 2008
491
0
Hey all. I have an odd question for you guys. My friend's PowerBook G4 crashed hard yesterday and she had to reinstall OS X (she lost all her stuff). She has 10.3, but she is having a hard time finding apps that will run under it. I did some research for her and found that her system should be able to run 10.5, which would make life a lot easier for her as just about all apps run under 10.5. The one problem with this is I am not sure if her system can handle it.

Here are the specs she gave me:
PowerBook G4
1GHz
512MB RAM

Does anyone know if this is enough to run Leopard well?? ATM she just need something that will get online, download torrents, and play DVDs. She is a musician and she has composition software that ran under 10.3. Not sure if it will run under 10.4, but ATM she just wants the system back to "useable" condition.

If she can't run 10.5, she should be able to upgrade to 10.4 right? She will have more trouble finding apps that are compatible, but at least it will run better then 10.3 does.

Thanks ahead of time to anyone who can help. She is already stressed out about losing all her personal stuff so I want to get it back up and running as soon as I can.
 
It will run, but kinda slow, as 512MB RAM is not much.

I had Leopard installed on my iBook G4 with 1GHz and 1.25GB RAM and it was slower than Tiger, so I re-installed Tiger and all is well now. Except Quick Look and Spaces, those are handy tools.
 
FWIW I'm currently using a 12" Powerbook G4 just now. 1.33Ghz with 768MB RAM :D

I believe that your friend's PB is pretty much the minimum spec for 10.5, although I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
 
spinnerlys said:
It will run, but kinda slow, as 512MB RAM is not much.

I had Leopard installed on my iBook G4 with 1GHz and 1.25GB RAM and it was slower than Tiger, so I re-installed Tiger and all is well now. Except Quick Look and Spaces, those are handy tools.
Click to expand...

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Quick question: How does Flash run on 10.4? She is a Youtube junky and I know she had problems with Firefox and Flash under 10.3.
 
gumbyx84 said:
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Quick question: How does Flash run on 10.4? She is a Youtube junky and I know she had problems with Firefox and Flash under 10.3.
Click to expand...

Flash will run in 10.4, I was to YouTube using my iBook, but since they have updated their resolution since then, my iBook is not really capable of playing YT content free of stutter.
 
I have Click-to-Flash installed in Safari 4 and life is 'marginally' bearable. I tend to stay away from heavy Flash sites.

I've also found that Youtube tends to look/run better in Camino as opposed to Safari.

Just my 2p worth.
 
I installed Leopard on my old Powerbook G4 1.6 GHz (1 GB RAM) machine. Performance was noticably slower than the same machine running 10.3. It was still usable, but with more than a couple of applications open or more than one user logged in, the slowdown became annoying.

Given that the specs you list are slightly lower than my PB, I would suggest to not upgrade unless there is an absolutely critical need. Even then, consider if an upgrade to 10.4 might be enough.
 
I have a 1.5 GHz PBG4 w/ 2 GB RAM and Leopard runs great. It's probably mostly because of all the RAM; I never experience the problems that people have of running 3 programs at the same time and having major slowdowns. I always have Adium, Mail, Things, and Tweetie running, as well as several background tasks (DropBox, QuickSilver, and ShoveBox).

I don't run into issues while running FCP or Photoshop at the same time either. Though, if I'm really going to do some heavy work, I'll quit everything but Adium or something like that.
 
I would recommend her upgrading the RAM, but she has no tech experience. She is computer literate, but something like adding RAM is something she won't do herself. She is also on the other side of the state, so I can't do it for her.

On top of that, RAM sticks for PBG4s are rather hard to find and expensive. She has already told me in the past she won't spend money on upgrading it as she would rather put that money (almost $200 last time I checked) towards a new MB/MBP.
 
gumbyx84 said:
I would recommend her upgrading the RAM, but she has no tech experience. She is computer literate, but something like adding RAM is something she won't do herself. She is also on the other side of the state, so I can't do it for her.

On top of that, RAM sticks for PBG4s are rather hard to find and expensive. She has already told me in the past she won't spend money on upgrading it as she would rather put that money (almost $200 last time I checked) towards a new MB/MBP.
Click to expand...

1GB for 50USD *

Guide on how to add RAM

* Depending on what exact PowerBook she has, as there is a Titanium model with 1GHz and also three Aluminium models with 1GHz, she can go up to 2GB RAM with two 1GB sticks.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g4/index-powerbook-g4.html
 
If she doesn't have a copy of Tiger, I would honestly just take the money that she would spend on it and put it towards a new Mac. Her computer is over seven years old at this point, and I think that she's probably gotten all that she can get out a seven year old computer that is used as her primary machine.

If she doesn't want to get a new one, I would just go with Tiger then. Panther no longer receives any security updates, and there are no longer any browsers that are updated to support it. Youtube is still going to be an issue for her though; in my experience the majority of G4s under 1.25 Ghz have some major issues with Flash. If she switches to the HTML5 beta on Youtube, that could help, but she would need the latest version of Safari, which is 10.4 and above only.

Don
 
spinnerlys said:
1GB for 50USD *

Guide on how to add RAM

* Depending on what exact PowerBook she has, as there is a Titanium model with 1GHz and also three Aluminium models with 1GHz, she can go up to 2GB RAM with two 1GB sticks.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g4/index-powerbook-g4.html
Click to expand...


o_O OK that is far cheaper then I remember finding RAM sticks before. If she can get up to at least 1GB of RAM, she should have no issue running 10.5 right?

Thanks for all the help guys. I will give her the info you all have given me. Up to her to make the final decision. Be warned I might be back to ask a few more questions about this later.
 
Personally man, I would advise her to go with Tiger, 10.4. It will run and install much faster than 10.5, and Leopard's extra features just aren't worth the significant added delay on a PPC Powerbook... also, if she needs to buy an install DVD, it's about 1/3rd the cost... ;)

Tiger was a GREAT OS, a much bigger stride for OS X than Leopard in my opinion...
 
Similar thoughts

quantum003 said:
Personally man, I would advise her to go with Tiger, 10.4. It will run and install much faster than 10.5, and Leopard's extra features just aren't worth the significant added delay on a PPC Powerbook... also, if she needs to buy an install DVD, it's about 1/3rd the cost... ;)

Tiger was a GREAT OS, a much bigger stride for OS X than Leopard in my opinion...
Click to expand...

I'm was planning on telling her to just upgrade to 10.4. Its just I know she will need the extra memory (her issues with flash video is probably due to only have 512MB of RAM) and 10.5 is a little more "future-proof" then 10.4 IE she will have less issues with apps not running under 10.5 in the future compared to 10.4. Just wish I could point her in the right direction to find a 10.4 install DVD quickly and cheaply. Its not like she can walk into the Apple Store and get it, and even if she could, she'd probably be spending $50+ for it. Anyone know of any places she could get it online besides EBay?

ATM she is too pissed off at the PB to bother with it right now. It doesn't help any that I can't get to her easily as I would just do this all for her (she has little patience for tech stuff). She really needs to get a new machine, but she has more pressing matters to focus her limited funds on (like getting her car repaired).
 
Dmac77 said:
If she switches to the HTML5 beta on Youtube, that could help, but she would need the latest version of Safari, which is 10.4 and above only.
Click to expand...

Have you actually tried this? HTML5 on my 1.5 GHz PBG4 absolutely crawls in comparison to Flash (which crawls in comparison to everything else). Made the computer nigh unusable. Mostly because G4s have a really hard time decoding H.264 without stutter.
 
iThinkergoiMac said:
Have you actually tried this? HTML5 on my 1.5 GHz PBG4 absolutely crawls in comparison to Flash (which crawls in comparison to everything else). Made the computer nigh unusable. Mostly because G4s have a really hard time decoding H.264 without stutter.
Click to expand...

No I haven't, I was just guessing, I didn't think something could preform worst than Flash on a Mac. I would have tried it, but my last PPC Mac recently died on me.

Don
 
Yeah. I tried it out for YouTube and I couldn't believe how poorly it performed. I'm assuming it's the H.264 encoding that did it in, but I didn't really have a way to test it out.

Of course, normal Flash YouTube videos aren't very watchable either. I've taken to simply watching them on my iPod Touch.
 
Of course, normal Flash YouTube videos aren't very watchable either. I've taken to simply watching them on my iPod Touch.
Click to expand...

Will be watchable with Click To Flash and "Play in Quicktime" option.
 
It will run 10.5, but will feel quite a bit slower compared to 10.3 and 10.4 given the lack of RAM. As a minimum, i'd say only consider 10.5 if you upgrade the memory to 1GB.

With older PowerPC systems, they can often benefit from a hard-drive replacement as well as newer drives are often much faster and consume less power.

The problems with Flash are mostly processor related and have little to do with the the amount of RAM.
 
it will run but it wont be pretty, leopard needs at least 1.5GB to really sing, I used to have an ibook with those specs and it ran leopard most of the time I had it.
 
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