Have PowerbookG4 bought in 2002. No $ to buy new, but should I?

Question

I have a Powerbook G4, purchased in June 2004 and running 10.3.9. I was planning to buy a new one next summer but this one has issues. I can't use any USB 2.0 divices; when I tried to use the same external back up drive this week that I have been using all along (not USB 2.0), I spent an hour turning it on and off and the Powerbook G4 on and off, finally turning off the Powerbook G4, plugging in the external drive, turining it on and turing on the Powerbook G4 before it reconized the external drive; I have only 4GB left of my original 27GB that it came with and is not upgradeable; and weird things happen such as scroll bar disappering when updating iPod in iTunes.
I stopped being able to use OS 9 apps (such as Pagemaker) many updates ago and can't use Classic at all so that is no longer a concern.
I upgraded RAM from 512MB to 1GB this week, which is returnable within a certain period of time for a restocking fee of 15%, and have ordered Tiger, which I can return unopened. I have been reading about problems moving files from a backup to Tiger once it is installed and I am afraid of the frustration of getting the system up and running. Once I did that I planned to buy Office 2008 for Home and School.
Am I crazy to not just buy a new system? After I install Tiger, will I have enough of my current 4GM left to make it worth it? I have twice in the past year deleted pictures and music because of getting low memory errors so that is a current concern.
I am going away for two weeks of training for a new job with an international company and won't get a paycheck for a month so my family doesn't support he new purchase as you never know what will happen. I argue that it is better to spend more up front and less in the long run and I have no concerns about the job/company.
Please offer your opinions.
Am I just wasting money on a system that won't even be "status quo" when I am done?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Well, first off you don't have enough free space on your hard drive for even running Panther, let alone Tiger. You really need to replace the hard drive with a larger one. They are replaceable, so I don't know where you got the idea you couldn't upgrade the drive.
The problems you are having sound as though they are due to having too little space on the hard drive and a need to "fix" the operating system. Some things you can do:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that presently AppleJack is not compatible with Leopard.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.
Not much more we can offer without knowing more about the hardware. There are lots of PB G4 models, but you haven't told us which one you have.
You can save some money - since that appears to be important for you - by downloading the free NeoOffice Aqua suite which is similar to Office 2004 for OS X.
In the long run you would likely be far better off getting a newer Mac (either used or refurbished to save some money) that is on the Intel platform and running Tiger or Leopard than continuing to spend money on a possibly obsolete model.