[mkuehn]

OK, so I have a P29 iBook 384MB/10GB/500MHz/10.2.6. When working on it and my iMac DV/SE 160MB/40GB/400MHz/10.2.6, the iBook seems to be a fair amount *slower*. Even when I'm not working on the two simultaneously, the iBook just doesn't seem to have much spunk...sorry, I mean "snappiness". Browsing the filesystem in column view seems to hesitate with each click, apps seem to take too many "bounces" to launch, and jEdit takes way too long to launch -- even typing within the app is laggy, but it's a Java app, so I'm not blaming the iBook for that, entirely.

I run maintenance-type utils pretty frequently (Cocktail, Disk Utility, MacJanitor, etc.) so I'm pretty sure nothing can be gained there. I'm also not running anything "weird" (X11, etc.) that might slow things down, unless Windows file sharing or Apache is considered "weird" enough to slow things down. I've reinstalled the OS from scratch not too long ago, but not because I thought it was too slow, and so the OS is pretty fresh. The disk is approximately 50% full.

What I'm wondering is if swapping the 256MB DIMM out for a 512MB one would make any appreciable difference, or if there is anything else I might be able to do to "kick it up a notch", short of waiting for new hardware this summer and buying a new laptop then?

Does the 34MHz bus speed make that much of a difference? How about the hard drive RPM differences (iBook: 4200, iMac: 5400 (7200?))?

Opinions, experiences? "Bueller...Bueller...Bueller?"

And regarding battery life: I get around 34 minutes on a full charge. Yep, 34 minutes. Unacceptable. Any ideas? My old PowerBook 190 had a "battery recondition" utility...anything like that for the iBook? I've also read that some version (10.2.4?) might have been responsible for this, but I'm running 10.2.6...

Thanks,
Matthew

[Peter]

somthing is not right there :/
RAM is everything though...

[crouchingtiger]

it sounds like something is definitely wrong with the iBook -- I'd suggest a clean wipe of the hard drive and reinstallation.

The battery is also clearly defective. A call to AppleCare would be in order...

[alien]

I have an iBook 500/384. I find the speed to be acceptable, given its low-end specifications. It's hard to say if your machine is too slow or not.

Type this: ls -l /var/vm into a Terminal window to see how many swapfiles your system is currently using. App launch and switching will probably take a while if your'e seeing more than 3-4 swapfiles. Additional memory will help in that case.

To learn more about actual memory usage, type top in the Terminal. If there's little "inactive" memory, this is also a sign that more memory could help.

About the battery: You're unfortunately seeing normal behavior for Lithium-Ion batteries. These batteries can only recharge ~300-500 times before capacity will begin to detoriate. But a recharge from 97% counts as much as a recharge from 10%. Therefore, newer Apple laptops won't recharge unless capacity falls below 90% (or is it 95% ?). This saves the battery from unnecessary recharges. However, this wasn't added until later revisions of the iBook, not yours or mine.

There is one way to increase the battery time, at least for a while. Unplug the power, then use the battery until the machine falls into sleep, disregarding any low battery warnings. If your'e lucky, the battery will last a good while more than the machine thinks. When the battery is finally flat, recharge as normal. It should take the real capacity of the battery into account from now on.

This works because there are circuits on the battery that decides when it's time to give the user a warning. But this mechanism needs recalibration once in a while. You can find some more info at Apple's tech base. I once went from 45mins to nearly 2h battery time, but now the battery is really dying.

If you have AppleCare, they might change the battery, I don't know what the policy is.

[radarbob]

Without looking into this deeper, keep this in mind...

iBooks have power saving features not in desktop models. The CPU can automatically throttle depending if it's on battery or on house current. Laptops typically have slower buss speeds and less cache than desktops.

All the elements you mention add up. W/out scientific evidence I'd rather have that 34MHz kick in buss speed than 100mhz in CPU speed - because a faster buss speed has the potential to speed *everything* up. Until the buss speed and CPU speed are the same, CPU cycles are wasted on waiting for the buss (ha, ha).

-- I'd suggest a clean wipe of the hard drive and reinstallation.

WARNING Will Robinson! PC think approaching!!

As a Macintosh user for 15 years now, I've *never* needed to reformat the hard drive. Why it's so common on Windoze has to do with the nature of how Windoze works. Maybe OS X has changed things - but I *strongly* suspect that wiping the hard drive to fix Unix problems is anything but routine. Don't do it.

Reading "reinstall" in Mac OS X Unleashed 2nd ed., It says nothing about reformatting to get a "clean" install. Here's what it does say:

I have found on numerous occasions that rerunning the Mac OS X installer is the fastest and easiest way to return to a viable system. There are, however, a few drawbacks - most notably, the system updates are replaced by the original version of the operating system. After running the Mac OS X Installer to recover a damaged system, be sure to open the /library/receipts folder and throw away any receipts files stored by system updates, and then manually force a software update to reinstall the latest versions of the Mac OS X support software.

Another anomaly is that if you've moved or removed any of the system-installed applications, they will be restored during the install process

[Tally-Ho]

I have the same iBook, same Ram, etc and I too have found it a little sluggish at times. I put it down to the bus speed bottleneck, althogh I thought the spec was 66MHz, not 34. I had a race when I first got it with a Pismo and I was fairly trounced. I was not a happy bunny, but I put it down to bus speed (the Pismo has a 100MHz bus).

With 384MB of RAM I have never run out; I doubt that swapping it for 512 would give you any more speed.

I've also given up running OS X on it. Like you I found simple things like opening windows a bit like walking through treacle. OS 9 is so much snappier at it.

I've reformatted the HD, written '0's', reinstalled the system, reinstalled apps, all to no avail; it's running as fast as its little legs will take it. I find a noticable decline in speed if the HD gets over 75% full; files start fragging something rotten - doesn't help the workflow when the heads are hunting for frags at 4200rpm.

I'm still blissfully happy with it and I can regularly get more than 2.5 hours on the battery. That shuts up my PC laptop loving friends.....for a while anyway.

Thankfully I don't need to run OS X as most of my stuff is legacy CAD software which only runs on 8 and 9. If I had to run X I'd trade up to the new G4 12" PowerBook, no question. Maybe that's a move to consider.......yummy!


B-T