That's a neat little machine. I haven't had the opportunity to use Macs very often; always been a PC guy. The one old Macintosh SE that I own, I don't have a keyboard for, so I can't even turn it on 🙁 Tiger was the last OS that ran on the older architecture (before they moved to the PC architecture), right?

Also I like that wallpaper, did it come stock with the OS?

Leopard was the last OS for PowerPC but the installer requires a CPU faster than 800mhz.

The wallpaper came from a site called customize.org.
http://customize.org/wallpapers/45862

10.4 will run nicely. Drop in some extra RAM and you're good to go 😀

Actually, at 667mhz even Tiger might be a little heavy. I know it runs like crap on my 700mhz G3 iMac and my beige G3 tower with 500mhz G4 upgrade. 10.3 Panther would probably be better.

The TiBook I have supports quartz extreme, has a 133mhz system bus and with a G4 cpu, the extra SIMD instruction set is present. Maybe those differences help a lot as OSX Tiger runs just fine on my PowerBook G4.

There is sluggishness on a lot of internet sites but I'm sure a RAM upgrade would fix that.

GXL750 wrote:

After having not touched a Macintosh (except to play with a few demo units at a store) for about five years, I now have one again. I payed $40 just over a week ago

I must be the unlucky one in the bunch. About three months ago I tried to buy an used iBook G4, and set my maximum bid/price at 100 euros. I always was outbid in eBay, and I tried about ten different auctions in the spam of about three weeks. So finally I decided to forget about it, as the "force of the Apple cult" seemed to command prices too high for my tastes even in the second hand market...

And now you tell me you've got a TITANIUM G4 for US$40. So unfair, I must tell! 😉

I bought it from a friend of mine. I knew Apples had a premium but I honestly thought the $40 I offered him was fair considering the way the machine looked. However, after looking around eBay and even Craigslist, I feel I practically stole the thing. Especially since it came with a good battery that still runs for five hours. However, I did since have to buy a new AC adapter so it's more like a $70 machine to me now.

I actually have two aluminum Powerbook G4's, both 1.67ghz. Both have issues but are still usable. Neither one will charge a battery and one has a cracked screen so I use them plugged in as desktops. The one with the cracked screen I have plugged into a docking station and connected to a LCD. I keep that one in the basement. It's main use is to pick up the Wi-Fi signal from my router upstairs and allow my other old Macs that do not have Wi-Fi to access the internet through it's Ethernet port. I got them both stupid cheap as parts machines because of the issues.

Oh, and one really big problem these G4 Powerbooks have is playing Flash videos. They get hot as hell when running Flash so I have 'No Flash' installed on them which blocks Flash content from automatically playing without getting your approval first.

With my TiBook, Flash 10 just runs like crap. I can get Youtube to play in 240p in a window; fullscreen doesn't work. Downgrade to Flash 9 and it can do the lowest resolution in full screen. Funny enough, my Tibook doesn't seem to have the same issues with heat as many people have reported on the G4 PowerBooks. This thing will get noisy but never hot enough that it's uncomfortable to use.

I found an app called YouView that accesses YouTube without the browser of Flash; it was actually reccomended on in an article on lowendmac.com. I can watch 420p in fullscreen with it and since it doesn't use Flash but instead whatever Mac OS X uses to play the videos, there's no slowdown; I can even surf the web or use e-mail and IM while watching a video.

Also, I disabled dashboard entirely. I didn't notice a significant speedup but it was pretty useless on the machine so I might as well save that megabyte or two of memory.

Also, I've noticed that after periods of extended use; especially if I've been using the internet, the computer will see a significant speed boost after a reboot and I'll also see more hard drive space free. So it's a good idea to cold boot the machine at least once a day.