Upgrading a 12" powerbook.....?
Hi there.
I bought my son a 12" powerbook on 2/24/03. He now wants to "upgrade" it a bit.
It currently has the following.
40 gig HD, (30 gig approx is useable, OS X uses the first 1o gig or so...)
867 mhz PPC G4 (3.3) chip
664 ddr ram
133 bus
He would like to put a bigger hard drive in it, although I do not know how big a hd is available for this. I'm told that the installation is difficult, that you almost need to disassemble the whole laptop to do this....not for the faint of heart. I friend of mine is quite good at this, and could do this no problem.
Apple says that I am already maxed out on ram for this powerbook, but others have told me that I am not. I do not really know what the truth is, but it looks like when I bought it, it came with 128 meg of ram built in, and we added 512 ram to it at that time.
Bottom line....to keep this powerbook useable, I need to increase the hard drive, and perhaps the ram if that is ok and beneficial.
Can this be done at a reasonable cost, or do I have to consider new?
Thank you in advance for your kind help.
I bought my son a 12" powerbook on 2/24/03. He now wants to "upgrade" it a bit.
It currently has the following.
40 gig HD, (30 gig approx is useable, OS X uses the first 1o gig or so...)
867 mhz PPC G4 (3.3) chip
664 ddr ram
133 bus
He would like to put a bigger hard drive in it, although I do not know how big a hd is available for this. I'm told that the installation is difficult, that you almost need to disassemble the whole laptop to do this....not for the faint of heart. I friend of mine is quite good at this, and could do this no problem.
Apple says that I am already maxed out on ram for this powerbook, but others have told me that I am not. I do not really know what the truth is, but it looks like when I bought it, it came with 128 meg of ram built in, and we added 512 ram to it at that time.
Bottom line....to keep this powerbook useable, I need to increase the hard drive, and perhaps the ram if that is ok and beneficial.
Can this be done at a reasonable cost, or do I have to consider new?
Thank you in advance for your kind help.
Comments
Originally posted by faithfulFrank
Hi there.
I bought my son a 12" powerbook on 2/24/03. He now wants to "upgrade" it a bit.
It currently has the following.
40 gig HD, (30 gig approx is useable, OS X uses the first 1o gig or so...)
867 mhz PPC G4 (3.3) chip
664 ddr ram
133 bus
He would like to put a bigger hard drive in it, although I do not know how big a hd is available for this. I'm told that the installation is difficult, that you almost need to disassemble the whole laptop to do this....not for the faint of heart. I friend of mine is quite good at this, and could do this no problem.
Apple says that I am already maxed out on ram for this powerbook, but others have told me that I am not. I do not really know what the truth is, but it looks like when I bought it, it came with 128 meg of ram built in, and we added 512 ram to it at that time.
Bottom line....to keep this powerbook useable, I need to increase the hard drive, and perhaps the ram if that is ok and beneficial.
Can this be done at a reasonable cost, or do I have to consider new?
Thank you in advance for your kind help.
A couple of things:
First, if your son has 30GB of space free, what does he intend to fill it up with that will merit a bigger HD? (I've seen 100GB drives available)
For ram specs, go to crucial. Or just click here.
The powerbook model you have does max out at 640MB.
You also have to weigh in your son's future needs (school, etc) and see what is right for that. If you really do need a bigger HD, froogle for some price comparisons. Although if that 'book is going to be doing some heavy workloads I might just get a newer one. Hope that helps.
Thank you for your kind help. Actually, Prior to me taking his powerbook when I bought him the new G5 imac, he had only about 3 gig left. Now that the imac thing kind of fell through, I gave him back the powerbook after doing a clean reinstall, and he does have more then 3 gig left, but I would think he will fill that in a short while, as he did before. Sorry I was unclear on that.
The HD increase is more important then more ram. At the risk of sounding complicated, the plan before was to buy him a new imac G5, so he could give me his 12" powerbook, and that would free up the family computer, the imac G4.
I wanted his powerbook to use at work, but because of the aluminum case, etc, it was not connecting to the wireless network (a ways away) like the bigger pc laptops. So it was of little use to me.
He liked the imac G5, but we had a few problems with the two we had, so we returned to square one, for now.
I think our game plan will be to access his needs for the near future, perhaps installing a bigger HD, if it buys him more time. I think that within the next year he will need something else, so we will see then......perhaps another try at a imac G5, or a bigger powerbook.
I thought the powerbook would be great for me, but perhaps an ibook will have better reception at work, due to its plastic case. I was told that this 12" powerbook cannot use an external antenna, like the 15 and 17 inch ones can, so to connect to the internet, I am out of luck at work. (the current 12" powerbook does sometimes, if I have it right next to the window, raise the blinds, and have the wind almost blowing the right way......) The bigger peecee laptops connect easily, due to bigger antennas and plastic cases, I'm told. Oh well.
For now I'm back using the families 17" G4 imac.....which is ok.
Thanks again! Frank D.
If the latter's the case, then I would think about getting a new computer in a year, if the current one can still serve him with a bigger HD.
Do you still have two iMacs then, a G4 and G5? if so, you could sell either one and get a laptop of your own.
At the same time, I thought I would perhaps like having a laptop for work at the firehouse where I work.
So, since my son thought he could use an upgrade, and did not really need portability too much, I would buy him a new 20" imac G5, and take his powerbook to use both at work and at home, thus freeing up the home based imac G4 for the rest of the family,
As I sadly wrote in another post here, I bought an imac G5 at Walden Gallerina 5/21, had airport problems with that, they gave me another new G5, and within two days the display died...so they were going to give me a third one, but at that point I was leery, and just got my money back, so we are now back to having two computers.........middle son took back the powerbook, and the family is sharing this trusty "old" imac g4.
Driving the 30 miles to the Buffalo Apple store every few days was fun, but was getting old quickly. My son does not seem too disappointed, but he is such a good kid that he would not complain if he was.....I feel a bit bad because I took his chevy, got him a new caddy, the caddy breaks down twice, then throw him back the chevy.
I'm sure we will buy again sometime in the next year......the youngest son does a lot of video editing, etc, and could use his own computer...maybe we'll buy the middle son a new one, give the youngest the powerbook, and I'll just be content with the imac G4.....heck, it's only money.......
Frank D.