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ChasingApple · Dec 19, 2006, 03:24 PM

Opera 9.1 brings the speed back to older Macs.

Continuing my constant testing of my good old iBook Clamshell 366, I decided to do some further Tiger OS X testing. Since web browsing is what this iBook does the most, and most of my writing is done on here, I wanted to check the current state of the new web browsers and how they run on Tiger with an older Mac.

First thing I did was wipe the drive and got a fresh install of Tiger on here. Then I did all the updates to get it current up to 10.4.8. Safari I checked first, and while Safari does seem to render web pages better in Tiger then it does in Panther, it still seems to bog down a lot. Heavy flash and java will bring Safari to a crawl though, so I moved on to Firefox 2.0. Once again Firefox did seem better in Tiger and ran well, it would do as Safari did when heavy flash and java were used on a page. Then I saw that Opera had released version 9.1. Normally a .1 revision is not a huge deal, but reading that memory leaks were fixed, performance enhancements were added, and things were cleaned up a bit I decided to go ahead and try it.

One of my favorite pages to use as a real world test with a browser is engadget.com. Lots of pictures, flash, ads, formatting, and just plain demanding on a browser that it is the perfect benchmark page for an older Mac. On a modern machine engadget runs fast and feels like any other web page, but on an older Mac engadget can bring a system to a crawl. Safari takes a lot of time to load this page up and scrolling the page is way faster in Tiger then Panther, but still slow overall. Firefox was not much better, but Opera was impressive. The page loaded quickly and scrolling was smooth and fast. It felt like my iBook was injected with a powerful G4 and a modern graphics card all of a sudden. I continued testing out my most visited web pages and found that Opera rendered all of them faster, smoother, and accurately. Needless to say Opera has become my Clamshell browser of choice for now. I am going to continue to run Tiger on here for some further testing, as it seems to be nice and fast even on this older hardware. Also worth mentioning are the fonts in Tiger. For some reason Panther does not like this old 800x600 12" screen so well, as anti-aliased fonts just don't seem right. Tiger renders fonts 100% better and cleaner, and that is something that is important to me. Anywho, if your running Tiger on an older Mac, and want a better browsing experience, give the new Opera 9.1 a workout and let me know what you think.

Cheers for now!

the_glassman · Dec 20, 2006, 01:03 AM

How does it compare to iCab and Camino for older Macs?

ChasingApple · Dec 20, 2006, 01:12 AM

iCab is not my favorite, I use it in OS 9 but I find it lacking in OS X. Camino is always one of my favorites and I find it always runs nice and clean. I just wish it had more to offer then a simple web browser. Perhaps when it becomes more feature rich in the future I will use it full time. It does perform well though!

gooser · Dec 20, 2006, 02:05 AM

i will test it out after the holidays. no time til then.

ChasingApple · Dec 20, 2006, 04:31 AM

I liked Opera 9.1 so much I just installed it onto my iMac G4. Simply awesome!

mBurns · Dec 20, 2006, 07:18 PM

Thanks for the tips chasing. I still feel that the best advice for these older clamshells (especially 466 Mhz model) is to up the ram to 576 Mb and upload Tiger on to it. You can't beat safari via 10.4. On my clamshell (using it right now) it renders pages quickly and correctly. I don't know, maybe I'm just spoiled with my clamshell but safari and tiger work FLAWLESSLEY on mine.

jamil5454 · Dec 20, 2006, 07:34 PM

Opera 9 is a little-known alternative to Safari and Firefox but it's actually a very fast, feature-filled browser. I use it on my Windows box and it works great.

ChasingApple · Dec 21, 2006, 01:22 AM

Originally Posted by mBurns

Thanks for the tips chasing. I still feel that the best advice for these older clamshells (especially 466 Mhz model) is to up the ram to 576 Mb and upload Tiger on to it. You can't beat safari via 10.4. On my clamshell (using it right now) it renders pages quickly and correctly. I don't know, maybe I'm just spoiled with my clamshell but safari and tiger work FLAWLESSLEY on mine.

I agree with you mBurns, Safari runs very well on my Clamshell with 576MB of memory, but I think you should do yourself a favor and try out Opera, it is faster then what your used to on the Clammy and its built in fonts are gorgeous! Give it a try and tell me what you think!

ChasingApple · Dec 21, 2006, 05:43 AM

Upon some further performance testing it would seem that Tiger and the latest Quicktime now works quite well again on my Clamshell! I had all but given up on Quicktime with Panther, but I can actually watch videos again! Of course only the smaller resolution videos work smoothly, but at least I can view em!

I tested around 12 trailers from quicktime.com choosing the smallest size. Nice to have this little feature back. Tested in Opera and Safari, smooth on both.

gooser · Dec 21, 2006, 09:09 AM

i remember you tested tiger on your old 466 about a year and a half ago and you were dissapointed. what's different now? especially on a slower machine.

ChasingApple · Dec 21, 2006, 04:23 PM

I think Tiger was younger then and most of us were still using Panther at the time, Panther was very fast and most apps at the time were Panther optimized. Now though, pretty much every app has been optimized to take advantage of Tiger, and Apple has optimized Tiger better then even Panther now. It would seem that over time Tiger has become more efficient and surpassed Panther on that level. I believe it is something one could only notice while using slow hardware like this Clamshell. But I can honestly say, that while Tiger is no speed demon on this Clamshell, it is indeed faster then Panther. I am going to write about it as soon as I finish testing most of the core aspects of Tiger on this Clamshell. Look for it soon, it will be detailed.

Thanks for asking gooser!