[zacharydz]

I own a 700 Mhz G3 iBook and my mother owns an 800 Mhz G4 iBook. We have a Linksys 802.11b wireless router.

Both iBooks have 640 Mb RAM and are running OS 10.3.4

The G4 iBook's speed surfing the internet is much slower than the G3.

For example, I set up both iBooks on my desk and loaded webpages at the same time on both computers and the webpage would load up on the G3 within a second or two. On the G4, it would take around 5.

This sluggish performance on the G4 is also after completely reformating the harddrive and updating all the software.

The G4 is still quite faster on other tasks, such as in iPhoto, so the problem seems limited to the Airport. I also tried testing the G4 on an ethernet connection, and the speeds were much improved.

I also tried booting the G4 from the G3's harddrive via target mode, and still encountered the slow wireless internet connection.

I took out the Airport Extreme Card on the G4 and re-inserted it in case there was a bad connection there...that didn't fix the problem.


I am quite concerned that there is something wrong with this computer, since even after being completely reformated and has a fresh install of everything, it is still considerably slower than a 2 year old, previous generation laptop?

Is this something that could be covered under AppleCare? If this computer does have a problem with it, I would like to figure it out before my 1 year Apple Care runs out. Thanks

[wataru]

Try your comparison again over ethernet instead of wireless to see if it is the Airport.

[kafoochy]

Well it sounds like you're using the same setup, same browser, etc. I think it has to do with your iBook G4 having the Airport Extreme card in it. When 802.11g was announced, besides being much faster, it was backward compatible. What many people quickly found out is that although a 802.11g device can work with a 802.11b router, for example, it will not be as quick as two 802.11b devices. On the Powerbook forum where I usually am, many people have complained about reduced reception with some of the APE updates, and I don't know if these have affected the AP systems. I doubt if you brought your computer into an Apple store they would find anything wrong with it. Besides, they all have AirPort Extreme basestations, so any pages that you load would be much faster than the G3 iBook. Now if it wasn't faster, than maybe you would need to have it looked at (or reset the PRAM, PMU, etc). But in general I think the G3 iBook with an 802.11b wireless card should be faster than a G4 iBook with an 802.11g card when connecting to an 802.11b router.

[Voch]

Bear with me because I haven't used/seen an AirPort Extreme card yet. Just thought I'd throw this into the conversation...

Is there an external antenna connector wire like in the older AirPort cards? If there is one, have you connected it properly? What is your AirPort reception strength (0-4 bars) on the iBook G4?

Voch

[Randman]

It'll also have to deal with what browser you're using, if the browser has been tweaked for optimal performance and how much ram each iBook has.

[Nodnarb]

Originally posted by Randman:
It'll also have to deal with what browser you're using, if the browser has been tweaked for optimal performance and how much ram each iBook has.

What do you mean the browser needs to be tweaked for optimum performance. I use Safari, how would I tweak that to make it go faster? (Also have an iBook G4 with 768 mb of ram.)

[Randman]

Originally posted by brandon420506:
What do you mean the browser needs to be tweaked for optimum performance. I use Safari, how would I tweak that to make it go faster?

Not having AutoFill on for everything, or at least keeping the Other Forms at a manageable length (Safari really can slow down if this is full).

Deleting Safari icons from time to time. If you're running pithhelmet or not. If you have the cache active or deactivated. You can also adjust the load time for Safari and reduce it. And basic maintenance such as running cron jobs regularly and repairing permissions from time to time.
All of those things can impact the speed of the browser, to one degree or another.

Have you tried actually measuring the input/output bandwidth for both? Menu Meters is a nice way to track the numbers down (and do a comparison).

[techtrucker]

I wonder (though I doubt it) if it's related to the non-Apple router. I've got an iBook G4 933 with AE and a 1 Ghz G4 desktop machine hard wired to my AE base station. Both load pages at virtually the same speed, the desktop machine may be a hair faster but hardly noticeable...

Steve W

[SFZoll]

FWIW, make sure your iBook is set to highest performance in energy settings. If you are like me, you have it autochanging between being plugged in and on battery: high performance and longest battery life. I was playing the Call of Duty demo and it was horrible. I thought of those energy settings and plugged it in and sure enough performance improved to make it very playable. It's a thought.