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fatbloke · Sep 3, 2012, 01:36 PM

Hi,

I recently bought my daughter her first Mac, a 'vintage' iMac G4 800mhz flat panel. It was recommended to us as a good but inexpensive intro to Mac ownership, especially because she enjoys annimation etc.

Despite having a 512mb RAM, which is the largest capacity I can find available for it, the machine is very slow, for instance Youtube videos are desperately slow to download and they jump and skip most of the frames.

Is this normal and is there anything I can do to improve it?

Also, we were told that iMovie would work on her machine if we got iLife 9.0, but again, it won't let her load iMovie; can anyone confirm if we have the right version of iLife and if there's anything else we need to get it to run properly?

Any help and advice will be very gratefully received.

Thanks,
FB

Thorzdad · Sep 3, 2012, 03:36 PM

At best, I think your iMac can "officially" run OS X 10.4. Is that the version on it? Unoffically, you could get 10.5 to run on this machine.

I think iLife '09 required at least 10.5.6. And the version of iMovie in iLife 9 required either an Intel or PPC G5 to work.

Depending on which version of the OS you are running, you'd have been better off finding a copy of iLife '06 or '08. However, even Macs of that vintage came with a proper copy of the iLife apps pre-installed. If you have the install discs, you should be able to get them from there.

Your iMac is 10 years old and is definitely going to show its age. Flash was always a pain on old PPC Macs, thus the YouTube problems. Try viewing the YouTube videos at the lowest resolution you can stand.

Waragainstsleep · Sep 3, 2012, 05:25 PM

Any G4 iMac can take 1GB of RAM total, however one of the RAM slots is considerably more awkward to get at than the other.

OreoCookie · Sep 3, 2012, 06:00 PM

Your daughter's Mac is old, very old, and you should not expect to run any recent software on it. In fact, if you would have come here for advice before buying, we would have suggested that you get an Intel-based Mac. Some of them are available for decent prices on the used market and they are significantly more powerful. Plus, they all run relatively recent versions of the OS and recent versions of all apps.

fatbloke · Sep 4, 2012, 12:43 AM

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep

Any G4 iMac can take 1GB of RAM total, however one of the RAM slots is considerably more awkward to get at than the other.

Thanks. Is this the larger slot under the second removable panel in the base, and please excuse my ignorance, but what benefits will upgrading this have?

Thanks everyone else for your responses. I appreciate that the machine is old and I do wish I'd found Macnn and your advice sooner..........

reader50 · Sep 4, 2012, 01:21 AM

There are two RAM slots in your Mac. One on each side of the motherboard. The factory stick (a 128 or 256 MB) is in the upper slot, and the accessible lower slot was shipped empty. You most likely have a 256 stick in each slot. Changing the lower slot to a 512 stick is easy, just be sure to get a Mac-friendly 512 module. Often called a low-density 512 version.

The upper (2nd) slot is much harder to reach. You have to remove the motherboard, and from what I'm told, this also breaks the CPU heatsink grease. Which you'd need to replace upon reassembly. If you actually pulled it apart for this, you might as well replace the (PATA) HD with a bigger one, and clean everything while you're in there.

This machine cannot access HD space beyond 128 GB without help. There are ways around this.

Really, this is a very old Mac today. Recommended for tinkerers, or someone who wants a unique-looking Mac for their collection or a designer piece. It isn't cost-effective to upgrade, so don't spend money on it unless you fall into one of the above categories.

shifuimam · Sep 6, 2012, 07:41 AM

Along with everyone else, I'll add my support on the "this is a very old machine" line.

Additionally, save yourself the trouble and don't even bother trying to put Leopard on it. 10.5 runs like total crap on any G4 that doesn't have a very good video card and a very good CPU - the only PPC Mac I own that can run Leopard smoothly is a 1.67GHz G4 with 1.5GB RAM and a Radeon 7000. Any iMac G4 (or G5, for that matter) just isn't going to run Leopard that well.

You're going to get shit video (animation, video editing, video watching, etc) performance out of any PPC Mac that isn't a PowerMac (and that's only because PowerMacs have user-upgradeable video cards and CPUs). A G4 is flat-out too slow for full HD video (720p or 1080p, mkv, h.264, etc.).

The G4 iMac is fine for basic stuff - Internet, music, etc. - but if you want to do any video work, you're probably better off looking at either a PowerMac (G4 or G5, but keep in mind that video card upgrades for any Mac desktop are very expensive compared to their PC counterparts) or a modern Intel Mac - look for a used iMac on Craigslist and eBay.

P · Sep 6, 2012, 08:18 AM

Originally Posted by shifuimam

Along with everyone else, I'll add my support on the "this is a very old machine" line.

Additionally, save yourself the trouble and don't even bother trying to put Leopard on it. 10.5 runs like total crap on any G4 that doesn't have a very good video card and a very good CPU - the only PPC Mac I own that can run Leopard smoothly is a 1.67GHz G4 with 1.5GB RAM and a Radeon 7000. Any iMac G4 (or G5, for that matter) just isn't going to run Leopard that well.

You're going to get shit video (animation, video editing, video watching, etc) performance out of any PPC Mac that isn't a PowerMac (and that's only because PowerMacs have user-upgradeable video cards and CPUs). A G4 is flat-out too slow for full HD video (720p or 1080p, mkv, h.264, etc.).

Actually a G5 has decent video and animation VIEWING support if you make sure to keep things like Flash updated. The GPU doesn't affect video viewing at all on PPC - hardware acceleration was only added to the OS quite late, and then only for a very limited set of GPUs.

Leopard doesn't require more of the CPU or GPU than Tiger, but it does like its RAM. An iMac G5 with 2 gigs of RAM (which all of them support) runs Leopard well.

fatbloke · Sep 6, 2012, 12:50 PM

Thanks for all the feedback.

I'm looking at a 2006 iMac with 1GB memory, 250GM hard drive, and Intel Core 2 Duo processor 2.16GHz, running snow leopard 10.6. It's described as graphics work and video editing; will this be OK for running iMovie successfully?

Cheers.....

Waragainstsleep · Sep 6, 2012, 02:58 PM

IIRC that should allow you to run the latest iMovie. I'd advise you put some more RAM in it though.

shifuimam · Sep 6, 2012, 03:22 PM

Originally Posted by P

Actually a G5 has decent video and animation VIEWING support if you make sure to keep things like Flash updated. The GPU doesn't affect video viewing at all on PPC - hardware acceleration was only added to the OS quite late, and then only for a very limited set of GPUs.

Leopard doesn't require more of the CPU or GPU than Tiger, but it does like its RAM. An iMac G5 with 2 gigs of RAM (which all of them support) runs Leopard well.

I've used my G5 quite a bit for DVD playback and watching downloaded content via Plex. I wasn't all that impressed with its performance. Leopard in general doesn't perform as well as I would expect it to on a G5.

I'd switch back to Tiger, except that most useful software these days requires Leopard at minimum.