IBook G3 Slowdown

I am running 10.4.8 on my G3 iBook. It's 900 mhz.. so its no slow ibook, however i am running into problems with video streaming (you tube, etc.). As I recall, it hasn't ever had this much trouble, and I haven't updated to 10.4 recently at all. Any ideas? Thanks. (ps... i will be updating to MacBook soon :-D)

I hate to say it, but I think it's a G3 thing. I had the most recent software and everything, but it just got slower and slower. I ended up giving up and getting a G4. I suggest if you want it to function better minus the new features, I'd downgrade back to panther. Mine works a little better. Just a thought.

Similar Messages

IBook G4 slowdown with find and sort

My wife's iBook frequently decides to slow down to a mere crawl, and it sounds like the hard drive (I think) is working steadily during these spells. Looking at the processes w/ top, find seems to be sucking up heaps of CPU time. I tried killing the find process, at which point sort and then makewhatis took over and continued beating on the machine. Any idea where these commands are issuing from and how to avoid them or at least reschedule them? (This often happens in the middle of the work day.) Perhaps this is a spotlight issue, since it started around the time we updated to 10.4. But I've noticed no such issues with my powerbook since updating to 10.4.
Thanks for any suggestions.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Errr... A quick reality check is called for. If you make files visible to the finder then they are no longer invisible files, so ignoring invisible files won't help you one bit. your best bet is to do a manual check for a file that starts with a "." (which would normally be invisible):
tell application "Finder"
          set thisFolder to folder "Pictures" of home
          set sortedFiles to (sort (files of thisFolder) by modification date) as alias list
          set newestFile to last item of sortedFiles
          if name of newestFile starts with "." then
                    set newestFile to item -2 of sortedFiles
          end if
end tell

Using an iBook G3 on and Airport Extreme Network

Hi,
We currently have an iBook G3 800 MHz (no airport card) and are planning to get a new superfast 24" iMac 3.06 GHz. My son will be getting a newer MacBook (assumedly with Airport Extreme built in) through school.
My question: If we set up an Airport Extreme wireless network, will including the old iBook (since it has only non-Extreme Airport potential) slow the rest of the network down, and, if so, would the slow down be enough to notice?
Would upgrading the OS on the iBook (currently 10.3.9) matter?
Thanks,
Rob S.

Hi, Rob. Welcome to Apple Discussions.
+If we set up an Airport Extreme wireless network, will including the old iBook (since it has only non-Extreme Airport potential) slow the rest of the network down+
Yes.
+would the slow down be enough to notice?+
Probably not (at least for the internet). If you're swapping files between computers, it will slow that down on your network, but not troublesomely so (at least, not in my experience). The way I understand it, unless you have internet access in excess of 11 MB, you are not going to slow your internet experience down at all by having the iBook up and running on your network. We use ours on our 10 MB internet and don't see a slowdown with our newer computers when the iBook G3 is on the network.

External Display for iBook

I'm thinking about purchasing a 19" lcd monitor for use with my 12" iBook. I need something that makes photo editing easier. I'm looking at either a Viewsonic VA1930WM or a Samsung 906BW. Does anyone any experience with either of these monitors or another monitor that they would recommend? Thanks.

I would like to add that even with the hack mentioned before the iBook has limited external display resolutions.
Using resolutions above 1600 pixels wide may cause slowdowns. One limiting factor is the display adapters amount of memory. For me that is 32MB.
You may also notice some anomalities when sleeping and waking the iBook. These include for example: Missing the mouse cursor until it has passed from display to another (or duplicate pointers). Some coloured zebra style stripes over some windows until they are refreshed. X11-windows that open up too wide to fit on one screen. Windows or requesters that have moved outside the screen area showing only one pixel width on current screen.
I guess most of these problems are just plain normal operation and have nothing to do with the hack, but I might be wrong and these anomalities might not happen on higher end models, that offer the external displays that are not mirrored.
Otherwise the iBook handles external displays very nicely and OS X really supports multiple displays well.
Notice that in the Preferences -> Displays -> (Order?) you can drag the menubar to another screen, if you want to make that screen the primary display.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

ITunes performance on MacBook versus iBook

I'm thinking about upgrading my 3 1/2 year old iBook for a new MacBook and I'm wondering how much of an improvement I'll get using iTunes. I've got about 23,000 songs on an external Firewire drive and there's typical an annoying delay loading my library and then occasional spinning multicolored orbs when I'm navigating the library.
Since using iTunes with AirTunes is one the main functions I use the laptop for, I'm wondering if the increase in processor power (1.07 to 2.4 GHz) and RAM (768 MB to 2 GB) on a MacBook will result in a significant improvement in performance.
Also, since my iTunes library is housed in an external drive, I'm wondering to what degree the slowdowns are caused by the speed of the Firewire connection. Would connecting my external drive to a laptop with Firewire 800 capability play a significant role in improving the overall performance of iTunes?
Yeah, I know these are subjective, largely unanswerable questions. I'm just looking for some comments based on everyone's experiences.

I think you'll find that the new MacBook will be dramatically faster.
I have a 10,000 song library and recently upgraded from a 1.5 Ghz 12" PowerBook. There is no longer a delay while loading the library, zero blips while browsing it, and even coverflow works perfectly. You'll be very impressed.

What is the largest pdf file that iBooks can read?

I have two large maps (largest is 74MB). They are in the iBooks library but when I try to display one, it thinks for about 10 seconds, then bombs back to the iBooks icon. I have read a much smaller map pdf successfully. So I'm thinking that I'm beyond iBooks' capacity. Any thoughts?
Thanks

Apple suggests to iBook's authors to keep the size less than 2GB iBooks Author: iBooks Store publishing overview
You may have too many apps open which doesn't leave enough RAM to open.
You may have many apps open which can possibly cause the slowdown and possibly the loss of wifi. In iOS 4-6 double tap your Home button & at the bottom of the screen you will see the icons of all open apps. Close those you are not using by pressing on an icon until all icons wiggle - then tap the minus sign. For iOS 7 users, there’s an easy way to see which apps are open in order to close them. By double-tapping the home button on your iPhone or iPad, the new multitasking feature in iOS 7 shows full page previews of all your open apps. Simply scroll horizontally to see all your apps, and close the apps with a simple flick towards the top of the screen.
 Cheers, Tom

IBook only boots to Apple

I'm going to try and be as detailed as possible, so forgive me if I'm too tedious.
Last night I was emailing, web browsing, etc., when my machine locked up. It just sat there with the beachball for a few minutes (no slowdown beforehand or anything). No keystrokes would bring it back, no force quit would come up, nothing. I held the power button down and shut it off.
Upon booting (and where we still stand), I get the chimes, and after a few seconds, the Apple logo appears-- but no spinner, and I hear no hard drive activity. Same thing happens when I try to boot to Safe Mode.
I have done the following:
-- Reset PRAM
-- Reset PMU
-- Booted to the Tiger install disk. This lets me into Disk Utility, but then it hangs on "Gathering disk info."
-- Booted to Tiger disk again, and did System Profile Clicking on "ATA" causes the application's spinner to apper, but nothing else happened.
-- Booted to DiskWarrior 3 CD. It asks me to accept the license, I do. Then after a few minutes, a spinner appears and the machine restarts itself.
-- Tried booting in Target mode with a Powerbook G4; the large firewire icon appears on the iBook, but then freezes in one place. The drive never appears on the Powerbook.
I had DiskWarrior set to do daily SMART test for HD failure, and received no warnings... so would be surprised if this is a complete HD failure... but of course, that's the most obvious possibility. Any other suggestions/ideas?

Well, it was the not being able to bring it up in Target mode that was really disturbing me. I decided to get all MacGyver and took the drive out; it's now sitting in a firewire enclosure, and DiskWarrior is running on it... surprising that it worked that way, and not in Target. The startup volume was missing and I've got a feeling there are serious amounts of bad blocks, etc. Will post the results when it's done... could take 24-48 hrs, according to Alsoft.

Alu iMac GUI slowdown

Every 1-2 weeks the GUI of our 24" Alu iMac (2.4 GHz, Aug 2007 model) slows down. Symptoms: cursor can be moved with the mouse, but the menus & windows respond only very slowly when clicked (about one minute). I can SSH into the machine from my iBook: 'top' shows low CPU usage, no program seems to hog the iMac, commands issued in the SSH session execute instantly. When "The Sims 2" is launched in this slowed-down state from the GUI, it takes AGES for the game to load, but once it is loaded, it can be played in fullscreen mode at full speed. (This indicates to me that the slowdown is not a graphics card problem.) After exiting The Sims and returning to the OS X GUI, it remains slowed-down. Only a hard reboot solves the problem. After the reboot the GUI reacts fast again.
The iMac is up-to-date, all firmware patches applied. No obvious hints in /var/log/system.log. There are some messages though which look suspicious to me, but have no idea whether these have anything to do with the slowdown phenomenon:-
SystemUIServer[7211]: Error: airportd MIG failed = 1 ((os/kern) invalid address) (port = 57667)
diskarbitrationd[47]: SystemUIServer [7211]:30279 not responding.
/System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/MacOS/ManagedClient[7336 ]: MCXD.doPostComposite:[ODNode nodeWithSession: type:kODTypeLocalNode ] == -14270 (Unable to open Directory node with type 8704.)
com.apple.loginwindow[3786]: MCXD.doPostComposite:[ODNode nodeWithSession: type:kODTypeLocalNode ] == -14270 (Unable to open Directory node with type 8704.)
My wife already declared that "our next computer will not be a Mac", so quick help would be much appreciated!
thanks, András

Barry Hemphill wrote:
I would run the hardware checker that is, I believe, on your software install DVD. Alternatively, you may have received TechTool when you got your system.
Well, I forgot to mention this, but of course I had tried both of them. Running the extended AHT twice did not detect any h/w problems. Same with TechTools.
Although it is a reasonable suggestion, I am reluctant to send the machine to repair as it takes about 2 weeks for the symptoms to develop, and until now I haven't found the right voodoo to provoke the slowdown.
I would really like to know whether I am the only one with this problem or are others having a similar experience?
The only comparison I have is the Quad G5 PowerPC Mac I use at work. It also runs Leopard, plus all sorts of programs (scientific number crunching, MySQL and Postgres databases), I log out about once a month, and reboot only for upgrading. It is rock solid, like an Apple should be.

Slow iBook G4

It seems everything about my computer is getting slow. More notably in the last few months. I've reparied permissions quite a few times; I tried to run Activity Monitor, but it WONT RUN. Don't know what that's about. I have a couple of Gb space left on the 30 Gb drive, and 768MB RAM. Airport extreme card; airport express base station.
Lots of people seem to have this slowdown problem, must be something going on.
Thanks

hi davewinps--
the problem is that you don't have enough room left
on your hard drive. ....... for optimal performance, a drive
should have at least 15% of its space available. you
have less than 7%.
This is not true. You can prove to yourself that it is not necessary to have 15% of your drive free by filling it up till a mere 100MB are free and then running your computer. I have done this. It does NOT slow it down. An exception would be if you are running an app that requires a huge amount of drive space for making temp files, such as perhaps some video editing. But nevertheless, you can prove to yourself that filling up a drive to withing less than 15% of its capacity will not affect performance. For one thing, a 30GB drive and a 120GB drive have an enormously different amount of "15%". This in itself should make you wonder about the truth behind the 15% rule!
This is a myth that lkely got started when OS X first came out and many older computers capable of running OS X had small drives (5GB or less) AND releatively small amounts of RAM (128MB), therefore using virtual memory (disk space) for the RAM.
I routinely record 6.5 GB video files onto my 30GB hard drive (ibook) and then compress them to a 300MB file. Sometimes I forget to delete the large file after it is done, and proceed to record another. The computer does not slow down at all, but rather it will eventually give a warning dialog that the drive is nearly full. If I do nothing to remedy the situation it will finally fill the drive completely then the application will quit. It never slows down, it just quits when it no longer has any room. No harm is done, no slow down occurs, the job just doesn't get completed.
Anyway, don't take my word for it, test the myth for yourself.

TA48312 I use a 6 year old iBook G4. It has gotten slow. The wheel just spins. Can someone help me?

I am 89 years young. I use a 6 year old iBook G4. It has gotten slower than me. I can't open firefox anymore. I can't get to google in Safari. The wheel just spins. Can someone help me?
<Email Edited By Host>

Hi, and welcome to Apple Support Communities.
Are you posting with it here?
How long has it been since you did any hard drive maintenance?
After six years of use, the hard drive may be so full that it is hampering performance.
From http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html :
Determine the available space on your Mac OS X startup disk
In Finder®, select the startup disk icon. For most users, this is Macintosh HD.
Press the Command-I keyboard shortcut.
The Info window for your startup disk opens. In the General pane, the Capacity, Available (free space), and space Used on your startup disk is displayed, as seen in the following screen shot:
As a general rule of thumb: if the Available space on the Mac OS X startup disk is less than 10 GB, it is time to free some disk space. We suggest 10 GB as an absolute minimum as this is generally the amount of free space required to reinstall Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier via an Archive and Install and still preserve space for VM swap files. More free space is better. For example, users of FileVault may want to retain more free space than that occupied by their encrypted Home folder: disabling FileVault requires free space somewhat greater than the size of your encrypted Home folder.
Even though Mac OS X 10.4 doesn't take as much space as Mac OS X 10.5, you still need to keep quite a bit of free space on your hard drive. A too-full hard drive is a common cause of system slowdowns.
If you find that you do have enough disk space, post back and we will explore other potential problems.

Powerbook VS ibook Helppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hi im looking to get a mac laptop but im not sure what to get i found a powerbook thats real nice that i think im going to get but first i want to know the difference between ibooks and powerbooks someone please help

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
The Powerbook and iBook are no longer current in the Apple lineup. However, if you were thinking of saving some money I agree that the Powerbook tends to be the better of the two choices. Expansion options are greater, screens are larger (except for the 12" Powerbook), and hard drives tended to be larger. Consider what you want to be able to run:
Mac OS 9 - Powerbook G4 with rear USB ports, known as Titanium.
Mac OS X 10.5 - any Powerbook G4 867 Mhz or higher.
Windows on a Mac - any MacBook or Macbook Pro for the ability to run natively without emulation slowdown.
Linux on a Mac - any Powerbook.
See my FAQ* on buying used and refurbished Macs, if you find you can't afford the current models:
http://www.macmaps.com/usedrefurbished.html
You'll see the wide range of possibilities.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

IBook seems slow

Hi
I've a couple of questions... please bear with me!
I have an iBook (G3 500mhz running OSX 10.3) which seems to be running slow for some reason. I haven't been using it much recently as I work on my iMac most of the time, but as we enter the wi-fi, compute-on-the-move age, I thought I'd upgrade it so I could at least pick up email when I'm not at home.
Two things... Is it worth me maxing out the RAM and installing 512mb in the user slot (there's 128mb in there at present...) and possibly investing in a new battery (I'm getting 20- 40 mins tops use out of it now) and, most importantly, trying to track down an Airport card that is compatible? Is this machine capable of the necessary interface with modern wi-fi technology or is it bordering on the neolithic?
Secondly, when I use 'Software Update' it takes AGES when it reaches the 'optimising' stage. I updated two things last night, Quicktime and a Security update and it took around 90 minutes to go through it. Is this a RAM issue or is there something else I should be checking out?
I've still got the OS9 option on it (which I never use) - can I dump it and open up some disc space or isn't this possible.
That's three questions - sorry!
D
iMac + iBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hi jazzeroo, welcome to Apple Discussions!
To answer your three questions:
1 "Is it worth me maxing out the RAM and installing 512mb in the user slot"
Extra RAM will certainly speed things up, and these days is a fairly inexpensive option.
2 "and possibly investing in a new battery"
Sure, given the limited life left in the old one.
3 "Is it worth me ... trying to track down an Airport card that is compatible"
Your call. Depends how much money you want to throw at the machine.
4 "Is this machine capable of the necessary interface with modern wi-fi technology or is it bordering on the neolithic?"
To be frank, it's a little out of date and you may be better off putting your money towards something more bronze-age.
5 "...Quicktime and a Security update ... took around 90 minutes to go through it. Is this a RAM issue or is there something else I should be checking out?"
Assuming you've got broadband, yes, that's pretty slow. It's not likely to be solely a RAM issue. How much hard drive space do you have left? Click once on the HD icon and then press Command - I (or choose File>Get Info. If you've got less than about 3 to 5 gig spare, that could be one possible cause of overall slowdown.
If your hard drive is low on available space, post back for further instructions on how to free up space + system maintenance tips.
6 "I've still got the OS9 option on it (which I never use) - can I dump it and open up some disc space or isn't this possible"
You could dump it, although the OS 9 option may one day be invaluable for trouble-shooting, along with resolving security and other issues. Best to keep it.
Sorry - that's six answers!
Edit: Sorry, Ronda. It's taken me 10 minutes to compose this reply!

Slow older iBook

Hi all,
I have a circa 2004 iBook G4 that I use simply as an "extra" computer, for word processing, email, web surfing, etc., when I don't really want to be at my desk. Unfortunately it has gotten VERY slow... even just web browsing, I experience lots of hangups and slowdowns. I've already upgraded the memory -- 384 mb -- and it's running 10.4.11.
Obviously I don't expect this computer to be terribly speedy, but it's bordering on unusable. And as much as I covet an iPad, I don't really want to spend several hundred dollars on a computer I use only occasionally.
There is no data on this computer I need to save, or software. Would it help to simply wipe it clean and reinstall the system software? I don't mind if it's a little pokey, but I'd like to be able to do basic things without getting so frustrated I want to throw it against the wall.
Thanks for any advice!
Erin

You could certainly try reformatting it and reinstalling the OS.
However, it could be that you have a dying hard drive, especially if it is the original, and if so, you would either need to replace the hard drive or alternatively, boot it from a firewire external drive. Try this utility:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/32454
You can download the demo and run it several times for free. It will give you a comprehensive view of the physical health of your hard drive. Hard drives have an average useful life of 3-5 years, and if yours is the original, it would be 6 years old.
You can also upgrade the memory to 1.25 GB by installing a 1 GB RAM stick.
Check out the hard drive first, and if OK, try a fresh installation of the OS and see how it does. If much improved, you could consider maxing out the RAM for even better performance.
Good luck!

IBook HD failure

Recently I had the misfortune to have my 14month old iBOok 30GB HD fail on me (luckely covered under applecare). The strangest part was that there was no warning at all. Usually there are signs of failure like slowdowns, errors, and such. However it all happend randomly. I used the laptop for 10 minutes, went and had breakfast and then went back to laptop making not so good HD noises (humming and what sounds like an inability to seek the whole disk platter). I took it in after trying techtool...it booted in store but then proceeded to do the same thing.
Is it normal for a HD to die like that? and is the data even recoverable?
Also, my use of the laptop was for music, internet surfing, some old classic games, and the odd video. It was never abused and i was very particular about it.

Hi Strimkind,
Welcome to the Discussions,
Yes, hard drives sometimes fail with no warning but in this case there may have been a warning and you didn't know it. Disk Utility will show you the SMART status of your hard drive but you have to launch the app to check it. SMARTreporter will monitor it and let you know at a glance (on the menu bar) what the status is.
It's good practice to always backup your data because it's not if your hard drive will fail but when.
You may be able to recover your data from the old drive by putting it in the freezer for about 30 minutes and then installing it in an external enclosure. You can find them for about $20-$30. If that doesn't work, a data recovery service can usually do it but prices start at $1000.
John

Wireless Link Speed of iBook

Software Update is suddenly giving an error that the connection has timed out on a 900 MHz iBook with an AirPort Card. Network Utility shows the Link Speed as 11 mb. Network Utility on a MacBook Pro shows a Link Speed of 54 mb.
Is this the normal Link Speed for the iBook? Is the AirPort Card Failing? Any ideas?
Thanks

The iBook G3's original AirPort Card is 802.11b (11 mbps). The MacBook Pro's AirPort Extreme Card is 802.11g (54 mbps).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11
So, as you have discovered, all is normal. You will only notice a slowdown on the internet if your internet access exceeds 11 MB.

IBook G3 Slowdown

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