iBook G4 help

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
These are both on behalf of my girlfriend. We are greatful for any help.



1. Can you recommend a good, free virus scanner for Macs?



2. Is it possible to buy replacement feet for an iBook?



Edit: Generally, my girlfriend is pissed off because her 1.2ghz g4 is running really slowly. I've suggested getting the memory upgraded. Any cheaper suggestions would be appriciated. I might even try and do a clean install on it, which should help.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by HammerIntoApple

    These are both on behalf of my girlfriend. We are greatful for any help.



    1. Can you recommend a good, free virus scanner for Macs?



    2. Is it possible to buy replacement feet for an iBook?



    Edit: Generally, my girlfriend is pissed off because her 1.2ghz g4 is running really slowly. I've suggested getting the memory upgraded. Any cheaper suggestions would be appriciated. I might even try and do a clean install on it, which should help.




    1. The best OS X virus scanner is none. There are no viruses to scan for - so why waste the CPU time and add another thing that can cause a problem?



    2. dunno



    To see if memory is the problem, open Activity Monitor and click the "Memory" tab at the bottom. Look at where it says "Pageins/Pageouts" and note the "Pageouts". Do this after the machine has been used normally for a few hours.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    Quote:

    Originally posted by lundy

    1. The best OS X virus scanner is none. There are no viruses to scan for - so why waste the CPU time and add another thing that can cause a problem?



    2. dunno



    To see if memory is the problem, open Activity Monitor and click the "Memory" tab at the bottom. Look at where it says "Pageins/Pageouts" and note the "Pageouts". Do this after the machine has been used normally for a few hours.




    Cheers. I'll grab it off her and have a look at it when she's finished her work.



    Edit: It's reading 193449/162456 Pages In/Out with Word for Mac and Safari running. It's OS X.3.9 with 256MB RAM.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by HammerIntoApple

    Cheers. I'll grab it off her and have a look at it when she's finished her work.



    Edit: It's reading 193449/162456 Pages In/Out with Word for Mac and Safari running. It's OS X.3.9 with 256MB RAM.




    Yeah - it's hitting the VM pretty hard. How long a time has the machine been up? Type "uptime" into Terminal.



    Sounds as if there will definitely be a benefit from more RAM though. Especially if those pageouts are over a short period of uptime.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    It's reading:



    0:06 up 11:00 2 users load averages 0.14 0.24 0.13



    It's been on for around about 10 hours, but it's spent most of that time asleep.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Laptop memory can be quite expensive. I was about to upgrade the Ram on my ibook from 384MB but I just decided it wasn't worth it as it was just the white g3 one. So I sold it and got a Mini with 1GB and the upgrade cost just £150, which is how much I would have spent on the Ram.



    In this case since you have a G4, a Mini wouldn't give you a speed increase so Ram would probably be the best idea. I wouldn't run any OS X machine with less than 512MB.



    I take it the machine didn't always run slow? Maybe you just need to clean out your caches. Cocktail makes the process quite easy. Clean out your system caches too. Repair permissions might help and you can try updating your prebinding.



    Were there any optimization apps installed or other software recently around the time of it slowing down or did it happen gradually?
  • Reply 6 of 6
    I had a look at the memory for the G4 iBooks on the Apple store and it wasn't too expensive (we're both students, so we get the educational dsiscount anyway) and I'm pretty sure I could source the same for cheaper.



    Unfortunatly, upgrading/cross-grading to a mini isn't really an option, since it does need to be an all in one portable system, again, because a student's notebook.



    As far as I know, it used to be faster. It's a late-2004 G4 and has never had a reinstall (I don't know how often this needs to be done on Macs tho). It's also used for running Sibelius, which is why I reckon a memory upgrade wouldn't do any harm.
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