[mattcass]

So guys I'm kinda torn. I know this must come up on this forum a lot so either read on or dont!

I've got a Powerbook G4 1 GHz bought 2 years ago, upgraded to 768 MB RAM. This thing is great as all you Powerbook owners know but it's age is starting to show. Pages gets annoyingly slow sometimes on simple little things like clicking the cursor between 2 words or pressing the up arrow to go up one line. We're talking little 10-15 seconds of rotating beach ball action.

Anyway, looking on eBay I can get about $2000 cdn for it. About the same price as a 20" iMac G5. Tough choices these days, I know. But I'm a pretty reserved kind of guy and I defintely dont like selling a computer after just 2 years. Over consumption at it's best I think and the last thing we need these days is more consumer buying.

Who has given up their laptop for a desktop? Will a further RAM upgrade/hard-drive uprade significantly help things? I was thinking of going from 768 MB to 1.5 GB and a 7200 rpm drive. Advice for the best RAM price? (OEM Samsung only) Advice on a new hard drive? (Hitachi Travelstar?) Can I get a Firewire 800 connection for my removed 4200 rpm drive?

Lots of questions I know, but hopefully you gusy can help. Thanks

[Dakkon]

doesnt matter what kind of ram you get, just get the cheep stuff, it works just as well as the expensive stuff... and a 7200rmp hard drive would greatly increase system speed, specialy with the paging.. but i think i would do the ram idea first, with more ram i would think the system would have to page to the hd less? as soon as i bought my pb, i also bought 2gig's of ram..

[Maflynn]

I disagree with the memory, Macs have been known to be problematic with some cheap memory and if you do a search in the imac/power mac threads you'll see people complaining about memory issues with cheap ram.

I'm a big believer in you get what you pay for, and with crucial you get a great product, very good customer support and peace of mind that you have quality. You spending a lot on the computer why skimp on the memory which may open up problems.

As for the amount, I think going over the gig mark should be more then enough.

Good luck
Mike

[robisconfusedd]

Originally Posted by mattcass

So guys I'm kinda torn. I know this must come up on this forum a lot so either read on or dont!

I've got a Powerbook G4 1 GHz bought 2 years ago, upgraded to 768 MB RAM. This thing is great as all you Powerbook owners know but it's age is starting to show. Pages gets annoyingly slow sometimes on simple little things like clicking the cursor between 2 words or pressing the up arrow to go up one line. We're talking little 10-15 seconds of rotating beach ball action.

id just like to add my experience,..

i have a 12" 1Ghz (with 266fsb) powerbook and its 2 years old(ish, i think.. its been a while) and i have 1.25GB of ram, the max for mine, and i just recently upgraded the hard drive to an 80Gb 5400rpm from the original 30Gb 4200rpm

and lemme tell ya, it didnt help much, i did a fresh install of tiger on the new hard drive, and everything still seems just as slow surprisingly, and to my dissapointment. However i think the ram helped the most but in my opinion i think since you have more than 512 its not going to make that much of a difference unless you are doing movie/photo editing because i definately notice that i can keep more things open in photoshop than i used to...

however, i still see the spinning beach ball of death frequently.. i love my pb though id never get anything else its so portable and works great most of the time..

>> heres what happened though, the dvd burner in it decided to die, like it wouldnt take discs in anymore, if you pushed them in they would come back out with a spring like action, so i took it to fry's and they sent it back to apple (it was under warranty still) and gave me a loaner...

now the loaner had 1.5Ghz 333fsb g4, 512mb of ram, and an 80gb 5400rpm hard drive, and WOW i dont know why but it was SO MUCH FASTER, and im not talking felt faster, it was DEFINATELY faster in all aspects, and i dont think i got the spinning beach ball of death even once, and i had this thing for at least 2 months, i fell in love it was so much faster than mine, i have no clue why exept for the faster processor and i guess the faster front-side-bus made it a ton faster.
^^ also something it had that my laptop doesnt was the ability to scroll with the trackpad, mine wont do that, i liked that..



anyway just thought id share my experience with ya!! id vote to trade up, im going to be doing that soon since i fell in love with my loaner and now i want a faster pb

[mattcass]

If I upgrade RAM I'm going for OEM Samsung/Apple stuff only. I've read about the issues on here before. I'd rather spend the right amount of cash and get the real stuff rather than the junk no name stuff.

RAM I'm going to get for sure to see what happens, but the hard drive I'm hesitating on. robisconfusedd, I'd definitely go with a 7200 rpm drive before a 5400. 4200 to 5400 isnt a huge just but going to 7200 is a 70% increase in hard drive speed (30% with 5400). Maybe that will make a big difference?

Front Side Bus though. Is that the same as Bus Speed in the "Hardware" section of system profiler? If it is I've only got 167 Mhz. I really dont know what that means but if it's comparable with the numbers robisconfusedd posted, does that mean something?

[kmarketing]

Hi,

If you can live without a laptop or can live with a laptop that you just need basic needs for, do what I did. Get the best desktop you can afford and get yourself the cheapest laptop that you can get.

Here's my story... almost 2 years ago, bought a 17" 1ghz for $1400. Traded with a person straight up for a single g5 1.8 and 22 inch cinema display. Recently bought a dual 2.0 g5 for $900, took out the memory and bigger hard drive. and sold my g5 1.8 for $1000. Also recently,I had a 17" 1.33 powerbook. I ended up selling it for a nice chunk of change, quite a bit more than I paid for, and now keep a pismo 500 and a titanium 400 which the 2 combined cost less than half of what I got for the 17" 1.33. And they both have nice specs: 1gb memory, airport cards, 60 and 80gb 5400 hard drives, etc.

To me, that was the best way to have spent my money, and I have money in the bank with my sale. I have a desktop that has a bus speed of 1ghz instead of 167 mhz. I have 3gb memory in my dual and 320 gb hard drive. Sorry, but to have had a powerbook that is so much weaker and cost more than my g5 just didn't make sense. And just knowing that the g4 chip is really obsolete and newer machines on its way, it just made sense for me to get as much money as I could for it, and have the best desktop that I could afford. My 2 older powerbooks do all the things I need a portable to do.

I hope this helps!!