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ghporter · Nov 23, 2008, 03:41 PM

My wife's trusty iBook is not as quick as it used to be. She's running Tiger and has 640MB of RAM. Is RAM an issue here? And how can I tell if her iBook is one that's limited to 640MB?

What sort of stuff should I look at in terms of software and tweaks? She mainly surfs with this computer, and she's running FireFox (I think V3).

Any other helpful tricks or tips?

CharlesS · Nov 23, 2008, 03:52 PM

I think for Tiger you want to have at least 1 GB of RAM, preferably more. Ask her what kind of slowdowns she's experiencing - if the symptoms are a lot of beachballs during which time she can hear a lot of disk activity, then it's time to add more RAM.

Cold Warrior · Nov 23, 2008, 04:01 PM

I use the application MacTracker to see max RAM for a particular machine.

amazing · Nov 23, 2008, 05:01 PM

A one GB RAM chip is a reasonable upgrade for about $34.

A 5400 rpm HD would provide some speed, but not with browsing. But if you put a 250 GB HD in you can turn it into your jukebox!

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...tCode=10007592

Problem is, those 2 upgrades are close to what it's worth...

amazing · Nov 23, 2008, 05:40 PM

If you want to live dangerously you can try overclocking it. Here's a helpful French article entitled "Overclocker un iBook G4" (and the comments about the article are still being posted!)

http://www.macxtrem.com/articles.php?article=148

'Course, you might just decide to pass it on, and get a refurb...

ghporter · Nov 24, 2008, 10:55 AM

I've ordered a 1GB stick of RAM; we'll see if that makes the machine more usable. And we're looking at tax time (just around the corner!) for when we'll get a new computer for her. Either way, having this iBook run smoothly is important, at least in the short term.

Thanks for the suggestions.

P · Nov 24, 2008, 11:04 AM

Generally, you need 1 gig of RAM with Tiger on x86, but 512 megs is enough for PPC. The difference is in Rosetta, which eats RAM as certain libs have to be loaded twice.

One thing that got me on the old G3 was certain Dashboard apps, that ate RAM and CPU. Use Activity Monitor and try clearing out some of the hungrier ones.

CharlesS · Nov 24, 2008, 11:48 AM

I dunno, I used to have an old G4 tower with 512 MB in it, and Tiger was paging all the time, and was very irritating. Adding RAM fixed it. It may not be a RAM hog to the same extent that the Intel version is, but it's still a RAM hog.

amazing · Nov 24, 2008, 11:54 AM

In terms of usability, 1.25 GB RAM will make a huge difference. And, I second the opinion about Dashboard, but I'd go further and actually turn it off alltogether, using Onyx or the like.

On my 12" 1.33 AlPB, browsing satisfaction increased enormously when I switched to Camino, because it has an integrated preference for turning off flash. Everything loaded faster. Maybe you're using flashblocker in firefox, but I'd still suggest trying Camino and seeing if browsing improves.

CharlesS · Nov 24, 2008, 12:13 PM

Dashboard is fine, as long as you're not running with a tiny amount of RAM.

gooser · Nov 24, 2008, 08:24 PM

did any "updates" cause the slowdown?

ghporter · Nov 29, 2008, 07:35 PM

It seems to have been all about RAM. Today the 1GB stick of RAM I ordered showed up, and after I installed it, the old iBook is cooking along fine. It's much more responsive and pages render faster in Firefox.

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions.

Simon · Nov 30, 2008, 03:25 AM

Lots of RAM is IMHO usually the first and easiest way to speed up a Mac.

Something else you can check is disk space. I have seen Macs really bog down just because their disks have filled up. If you have an 40 GB HDD in that iBook filled up to 35 GB chances are you'd see quite an improvement if you swapped the disk. Problem is, those disks have become fairly expensive by now.

Once the hardware is taken care of, it gets more time consuming. What kinds of widgets are running? What kind of extensions are there? Startup items? Background processes? Check /Library/... and ~/Library/.... This can take a lot of time, but usually also helps get the Mac back in shape. Especially if you're helping out with somebody else's Mac and that person doesn't know much about computers. I've been amazed what kinds of stuff they manage to install.

ghporter · Nov 30, 2008, 08:57 AM

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't looked at cleaning out the hard drive yet, but it probably needs some sweeping. She has only a few widgets running-the basic ones that come running as default in Tiger, and Maintiget, so that's probably not a problem.

We're looking at a NEW MacBook at tax time, so adding RAM was a good stop-gap, but we don't want to spend much time or money on upgrading what will become a back-up computer. But already the machine is doing so much better that my wife is really happy about it again.

Thanks again!