Various problem with Powerbook

Question

My boss just bought a Powerbook over the weekend and now he has taken it back. He bought it because of all the problems he was having with his PCs. Felt the Mac was supposed to be bulletproof.
Tried to run ITunes and it took awhile to start the problem (on the PC it comes right up).
The first song he played ran for about 15 seconds and then he got the spinning wheel that wouldn't stop (I have similar problems on my G4 periodically when using browser).
He said he could barely touch the bottom of the machine it was so hot.
He also got various information at the apple store which he found out later was incorrect. For example, he was told you didn't have to partition the drive to use Vista on it - later he was told he did have to partition it.
I happen to like the Mac myself and have always had one but it is difficult to promote when this is happening.
Tom

Answer 1

First of all, we'd have to know a little about the hardware you have.
• How much RAM do you have? You can find out by clicking on the Apple icon at the top left of your screen. If for some odd reason, it's under 512MB, you need to get some more. OS X isn't anywhere near the memory hog like Vista, but when you try and work cover flow, it eats up quite a bit of memory.
• Why speed processor do you have? Hopefully it's a faster one. A check in the same place will tell you this. It would also be good to check on how much video memory (VRAM) your machine has. This can be found under the "System Profiler" app. which can be launched via the "More Info" button of the "About This Mac" window. More here means faster responses to iTunes stuff.
• How much free space do you have left on your HD? To find out, select the HD icon on your desktop, and either type "Command-I" or Select File->Get Info from the pull down menus. If you have 1GB or less and you're not running anything else, you might notice some slowness in your system's responsiveness, especially when you're multi-tasking.
• What kind of file are you trying to get iTunes to launch? A video file? A music file? What format? At what bit-rate? If you were trying to watch a video in iTunes that was very compressed and a high bit-rate, then it might get choppy. Type "Command-J" while in iTunes, and check things like "Bit Rate" and "Kind" from the selection boxes to get this info to appear.
• Now here's the big Q: Is there anything else running when you try to do your afore mention operation? There are a couple ways to check this: Launch the "Activity Monitor" (Mac HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor) and see what is eating up all of your memory or processing power.
Or, if you want to have easy access to stats like these, but with less clutter and CPU usage, look at this widget here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html
I've always found it quite useful, and it'll keep running taps on most of the previous questions so far.
Perhaps you have background programs running that are eating up your power. It could be that some of these launch upon login. Look at System Preferences->Accounts->Login Items, and delete some of the programs/processes that start at login. If your system runs a lot of programs, chances are that a few of them want priority when you login. If you just want something to stop that's in your way, check out the "Force Quit" window. Any programs that aren't responding will be highlighted in red and you might want to consider stopping them.
You shouldn't stop any processes that are necessary to the system running, but that's rarely a worry since OS X doesn't let you do that easily (or without adim. privileges).
Finally, and this amy be the big one, the system is automatically set to do weekly cleanup. I don't know what yours is set at, but once in a while, usually around 3 am, the system runs what are called cron scripts and fixes permissions, journals, etc. I personally run a little app. called "Cocktail:"
http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php
If my system starts lagging after I've run it through the gamut of work that I do, a little clean-up now and then picks it up nicely. "Emptying caches" is another great performance-fixer. Apps. like Safari can hog a bunch of memory when you're doing intensive tasks, so if you go to Safari->Clear Cache, you might fine a little boost there after you've been surfing a lot.
Macs have a lot of buffers built into them to try and keep the system from crashing. This give you peace of mind while multi-tasking, but when problems surface, it's easy enough to try and figure out the cause. I don't know what your friend plans on doing with his/her new Mac, but when you do a lot of work that drains the system, these little tips can help even basic users squeeze the last ounce out of their machines power. The big things to try and have are enough free disk space on your HD, and plenty of RAM.
www.Newegg.com is also a good place to get cheap workable RAM. I remember getting 2 1GB DIMMS (max out the system) for less than $250 for my PB, and that was almost 2 years ago. After you've tried all of the simple maintenance avenues to boost performance, you can always try for more memory. Good luck!