I was just given an older powerbook G4 and I am looking to get this system more up to date. My question is it worth getting the latest OS for it and a larger hard drive? The system version is a Mac OS X 10.2.8(6R73) 550 MHz processor with 256MB of RAM. This is the first MAC I have ever owned and I have very limited experience with a MAC.

Thanks

 

I'd definately bump up the ram to the max. check crucial.com.

They recommend 867MHz+ to run Leopard, but you can probably run Tiger. See if you can find anyone you know who has a copy, I'm not sure where you could find a new copy.

Oh and it's just "Mac" ;-)

 

aaah got it thanks i'm such a noob when it comes to Mac systems.

 

actually I think it's too slow to run leopard 10.5 so bumping up the ram wouldn't be necessary since 256 should be fine for 10.2. There isn't much of anything you can do to update this Mac. They don't make those types of processors anymore or the RAM it uses. You could probably put Tiger on there 10.4 so if you wanted to do that then you should up the RAM but it might be expensive but there's not much you can do to make it faster.

 

um, running more ram is never a bad thing and will definitely improve your Mac OS X experience...and not sure what you are talking about 'they don't make the RAM anymore'. You can get a 512 stick at crucial for ~$90.

 

Yes but it reaches a point of dimishing returns. Running 10.2 with 1gb of RAM is not going to provide a big boost compared to running at 512mb. Keep in mind the 10.2 only requires 128mb of RAM so almost 10x the recommended is a bit of an overkill especially with a 550mhz G4. I never said you couldn't buy the RAM anymore just that it's now four generations old DDR3>DDR2>DDR>SDRAM and current laptops don't use this technology and haven't for years. The powerbooks might've been the last line of laptops to still use SDRAM since the x86 (PCs) architecture had moved on to DDR and DDR2 way before the mac did. In the end I think spending almost $200 for 1gb of RAM to pair with a 550mhz outdated slow G4 processor is a waste of money. I say if you want a mac laptop see if you can sell it for a couple hundred and buy a used macbook. eBay is your friend.

 

^^^ The amount of RAM you need is relative to what you're doing with the computer while having a minimum needed to efficiently run the OS.

You may say that 1GB isn't much of an improvement over 512MB which in many cases is true. For a user that only does spreadsheets it probably won't make much difference, but for a audio/video editor it's a substantial increase.

 

True and now a days a audio video editor would not use a 550mhz G4.