[dowNNshift]

Hopefully someone browsing this forum will be able to offer me a valid solution.

I have a week-old iBook 800 G4 with 256 MB of RAM (stock) and the stock hard drive. What concerns me is that not only does the new 'book feel slow, but it feels slower than my old iBook 600 G3 (God rest her soul ). And to add insult to injury, my work AMD Athlon 2600 (2.1GHz) running winBlows XP Pro feels twice as fast.

Now I'm no neophite when it comes to the computer, I've been professionally using Macs and PC's for over 15 years -- yet this one has me thrown for a loop. I'm not running demanding apps like Photoshop, just simply iLife applications and Safari. Is this the work of the 'awe inspiring' OS X v.10.3??

Should I max the RAM out at 640MB, or using a 7200RPM external remedy the situation?

Thanks in advance!

[Big Mac]

Down, I would bet your main performance ailment is the lack of RAM. Everyone says that OS X performs much better with more RAM, but until recently I couldn't confirm that conclusion with anecdotal evidence. A few months back my iBook 466's DIMM died, and after getting rid of it my iBook was far slower than it had been. It took a heck of a long time to draw the desktop after reboot, for example. Once I received my replacement RAM, proper performance was returned. So the amount of RAM installed is very important.

[dowNNshift]

A thought occured to me....

Has anyone experienced lag with Filevault on vs off?

As crazy as that might sound, seems plausible?

As for the RAM, Crucial here I come!

[roders]

I think having Filevault turned on, especially on a laptop with a slow HD (4200rpm) will hit performance badly.
Turn off filevault and add/max the ram, and you should be good to go.
P.S you could check to see if processor performance under the energy settings tab of system prefs is set to highest.

[Macpilot]

Max the RAM.

[Stinkysteve]

...and dont forget to go into Disk Utility and run Repair Permissions on a regular basis, especially after installing new software.
I wouldn't keep more than 200 fonts active either, Font Book stinks at font managment.

[Lateralus]

.maR

[sniffer]

Agree about the ram. I've used 128-384- and now 640 mb on my 600 ibook. Wouldn't recommend anyone to go lower than 384, except for people who runs light single apps at the time. (128 not enought for OS X despite what Apple says IMO)
Please post the result thanks. (I've been lurking for a replacement for my g'old one so.)

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by sniffer:
(128 not enought for OS X despite what Apple says IMO)

Haha... I remember how the two low end iMacs from the early 2001 lineup had 64MBs of RAM and at one point shipped with OS X 10.0.

That must have been pure hell.

Anytime that you are thinking that your OS X machine needs more RAM (which it probably does), but you don't have enough money to buy any, soothe yourself with the thought that somewhere on this earth... there is still somebody using OS X 10.0 on a machine that has 64MBs of RAM.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
That must have been pure hell.

Exactly. My first mac shipped with 64 and even OS 9.0.4 stuttered a lot under that amount.

[pimephalis]

Almost surely the problem is a lack of memory. However, you can do the quick and non-scientific diagnosis of your problems by simply listening to the hard drive. When the iBook seems to slow down, can you hear the hard drive working overtime? For example, when switching apps, can you hear the drive thrash? Or when you open an application, does it seem to take forever to load while the hard drive works and works and works?

My experience: I bought an iBook 700 fourteen months ago, and spent about two weeks with the stock 128 ram. It was nearly unusable. As soon as I opened anything other than the browser and mail.app, it would take forever to switch between apps, or even perform relatively simply tasks. When I dropped the extra 512 mb chip in there, the iBook doubled its speed.

[wataru]

I have a new iBook G4 800MHz, and because of problems with high density RAM, I'm currently running with only 256MB while waiting for my replacement 512MB stick to come. I didn't think it would be so bad, but it is slow as molasses when I have enough apps running. I wonder if part of it is due to memory leaks?

[dowNNshift]

Ok guys -- First of all, thank you all for your feedback.

Today FedEx dropped off my new 512MB SODIMM. After installing it, double checking the Apple System Profiler, yep 640 beautiful Mega-Bytes of RAM. So lets see if there is any truth to my theory?

I opened GarageBand and mixed some tracks.. eh little smoother, but I think investing in a Lacie 7200RPM Firewire will make it operate comfortably. So no real benefit there.

Next to iPhoto.. Alright, pretty good. Thumbs up on the performance there.

The general feeling of the Operating system is the same... little sluggish, but I am assuming it's the 4200RPM crap hard drive they stick in these guys. I'm gonna play with file vault ON vs. OFF to see if that could maybe be the culprit.

Note to any Apple Hardware Developers out in Cuppertino cruising this thread: Customers will GLADLY pay for a 7200 stock hard drive in your laptops!

anyways... thanks again for the advice y'all!

[Lateralus]

You need to start multi-tasking before you start seeing any real benefit from the RAM.

[sniffer]

What he said ^

[dowNNshift]

Multi-tasking, like have 3+ apps open simultaniously? hmmm... I do that all the time.

Beats me, guess I've just gotten spoiled at the knee jerk reactions of my work AMD Athlon.

[deathvole]

Originally posted by dowNNshift:
Multi-tasking, like have 3+ apps open simultaniously? hmmm... I do that all the time.

Beats me, guess I've just gotten spoiled at the knee jerk reactions of my work AMD Athlon.

What's your Energy Saver setting? How's it feel at "Highest"?

Make sure you turn off FileVault. My G4 iBook (stats below) actually feels snappier than the 2.4GHz P4 sitting next to it when cruising around the desktop, basic system level stuff. Naturally the P4 plays MoHAA *much* better than my iBook, however. ;-)

Also anything that hits your laptop's stock harddrive often is definitely going to make things crawl, regardless of processor setting.

Cheers,

-DV

[dowNNshift]

Thanks for the tip deathvole.

I agree that you definitely pay a performance price for security on the notebooks. I guess I'd deal with it if i had top-secret stuff on here... but its silly because I don't.

Either way, looks like yalls tips + the 512MB of wonderful Crucial RAM (highly recommend those guys), seems to have hastened things up a bit.

I dont think i'll be fully satisified with Garageband or light photoshop-ing until I lay some green down for a Lacie 7200RPM Hard drive.

Above all, it's great to have a Mac again -- especially after not having one for over a year.

[qnxde]

Still sounds like there's something wrong, it should at least be faster than your old iBook 600...I'd investigate further, I've used an iBook G4 800 and it was positively spritely..

[mkral]

Not sure exactly what all of these do, but I got the following tips off of the macnn forums back when I was on my ibook 700 & it was running slow. I run them regularly & it does seem to keep my ibook G4 running smoothly. Hope they help:

"By "Magic Five" I'm referring to the Terminal commands:

1. sudo /etc/daily
2. sudo /etc/weekly
3. sudo /etc/monthly
4. sudo update_prebinding -force -verbose -root /

...and lastly...

5. Open Disk Utility and run Repair Disk Permissions

My experience has been that those five steps will pretty much cure what ails ya in Jaguar. "


From: Apple - Discussions - 10.2.4 Battery Life Reduced?

http://discussions.info.apple.com/We....2@.3bbf6b95/6