[xia]

My PB G4 12" (with 10.4.11) can go mad daily: I have times when the internal fans run continuously, even to the extend of forcing the pb into a sleep mode. When I am watching the Activity Monitor, the fan ON happens when the high % CPU usage occurs, normally by just one or two common software, eg Firefox 3.0 or MS Word 2004.

The peculiar thing is, if I just run Firefox with NO front window, the CPU usage could be very low. As soon as I open one window with some animation or infrequent auto-image changing, the CPU usage by Firefox can increase to 50 to 70%. Opening a window with simple text display does not cause the over use of CPU. Word is similar: running the software is not a cause; the cause is opening and typing text in a word document.

Our IT people initially said that my pb is dying. Now they do not know what has gone wrong. Any suggestion or solution would be mostly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

yx

[Maflynn]

I've found that when I use firefox and there's a flash plugin on the website, the cpu goes to 100%. I'm not sure about current versions of firefox but when I had the prior release that was the case. I've since stopped using firefox on the mac fwiw

[xia]

So is Safari better?

What about the word? I have nearly identical things using Word: If I open a word document, say 10 pages of pure text (no images or movie), and start to type. Very soon the word usage will be 70-90%, eventually the pb goes to sleep.

Thanks.

[amazing]

Flash is not well-handled--which is why people use flash-blockers. Download Camino webbrowser from versiontracker.com and make sure that flash animations are blocked in preferences. My 12" ran much better when I did that. Either that or get flash blockers for firefox and safari.

What version of word?

You're not running anything in Classic, are you?

[xia]

I have 2004 Word, version 11.5.0.

I do have the classic on hard disk. But normally it takes little portion of CPU. So far, I found Firefox and Word to be the problem source - usually one of the two uses more and more CPU %, when it reaches 90% or more, the pb will be put into sleep.

[amazing]

I used to use Classic on my 12" under 10.4.11 so that I could play Shanghai II, which I think is the best-ever mahjong solitaire game. If I left Shanghai open in Classic and switched to another app, Classic would peg the CPU, temps would rise and the fans would go to hairdryer speed. Lesson learned: need to quit apps in Classic before switching to another task. Classic by itself will go to sleep quite well-behaved, but not if an OS 9 app is open.

Can't help with Word 2004, since Word X was quite well-behaved.

I always use Camino because of flash problems...