Opinions on G4 Powerbook for a potential buyer

[haemogoblin]

Evening all!

I have been looking online at 1.6Ghz G4 Powerbooks and toying with the idea of buying one, but I would appreciate people's opinions on them. For example do they have any design flaws? like the Ibook G3 and its dreaded video fault or weak hinges. Also how well do they perform online, can they hack general surfing and youtube? What is the latest release of OS X it will accept and could i sync an Ipad along with itunes with it? I have a 3rd Gen Ipad and I'm unable to sync it with the itunes on my Pismo running Tiger as it is too old.

If i bought one it would be the quickest Mac I own to date, at present the title is held by my G4 550Mhz Pismo. However there are certain things the Pismo struggles to cope with, not surprising for a 13 year old machine. So I'm feeling like adding a machine to the family and the last ever G4 Powerbook seems very fitting, what with me having the Pismo. Which was also the last and best G3 Powerbook.

Many thanks

James

 

[TheMacGuy]

I personally have a 1.5GHz 12" PowerBook G4 (the last model they have). They do suffer from a few problems, like one where one of the memory slots going bad, or the problem with it going to sleep for no reason. There are also problems with the display, and like all the PowerBooks and MacBook Pros that had the same design suffer from dents because of the soft aluminum.

My PowerBook 12" leaves a little to be desired in terms of speed, but if your upgrading from a Pismo, it should be a big increase in performance. All the last PowerPC Macs are stuck with 10.5.8 Leopard and iTunes version 10.6.3, which seems to be the minimum requirements for syncing your iPad, according to Apple's website. BUT, thats running its original firmware. I don't know about iOS 6, but I know that iOS 7 requires iTunes 11.1 to sync, which requires 10.6.8 and an Intel processor.

 

[beachycove]

X.5.8, maximum. YouTube, no, don't go there. General web browsing, yes, for the most part -e.g., Flash is usually limiting. But then you have that problem with spades on iOS or even on a new MBP. More functional than a Pismo? Yes. Reliability? There is a fairly common sleep glitch which is cured by removal of a small component, requiring some disassembly, but it's not so bad. I forget the details, though I did it a while ago on a 1.67mhz model.

They do get fairly hot when on the web and working hard — not so hot as to fry anything, but certainly hot enough to spin up the fans. Just so you know.... It is not going to run cool like some of the later intel portables.

If they can be acquired cheap, the G4s are still nice machines and worth the plunge. Batteries are getting cheaper, as for the Pismo, which is nice. My youngest daughter has one for homework and such, and she is 17, so there is a little more life left in a G4 still for certain purposes. My daughter refuses to even try YouTube on it, though — too slow and often no really workie.

I bought a 12" G4, 1.5ghz, waaay back in 05, and have just installed an SSD in it after the original drive failed. The SSD has given the thing a whole new lease on life. Massively better machine.

A 7200rpm drive is said to have much the same effect in a G4 PowerBook, and would probably be the most realistic upgrade for a late 15" model after RAM, but the SSD is nice in the 12" model especially because of its single RAM slot. I no longer notice when the thing runs out of RAM because of the speed of the swap space on the SSD. Very nice. You don't have that RAM limitation with the 15" model, so I'd go for a spinning drive upgrade if some extra oomph is needed.

Mind you, you can buy a nice C2Duo from 08-09 now fairly cheaply, and they remain very capable machines. Depends what you want it for (collect or use) / to do with it (internet machine or office applications).

 

[TheMacGuy]

I'd look at an early Intel machine. You might find a great deal on one. I was looking at one of the last MacBooks for a friend (the unibody model), and they are going fairly cheap, ~$400. More then a more, but more functional by todays standards.

I bought a 12" G4, 1.5ghz, waaay back in 05, and have just installed an SSD in it after the original drive failed.

I hate to change the subject, but how did you put it in there? Did you use one from OWC?

 

[beachycove]

OWC.

 

[haemogoblin]

Hi there guys

First of all, thanks to everyone who took the time to reply and give some pretty thorough opinion's on this machine, it has given me food for thought.

I'll try to answer one or two of the questions that have been asked. Firstly usage, if you haven't guess already by the fact I'm using a G4 550mhz Pismo, I'm not overly bothered about top end speed. I have a Winblows desktop machine and laptop to cover running modern Apps like Itunes for the Ipad. The main cause for my interest are:

1. I loved these machines when they came out, but could never afford one

2. I have a nostalgic association with Motorola PPC Apple computers, I'm not some sort of purist or anything. I just associate the old G3,G4 and 68k machines as being Apple computers. When they made the inevitable move to intel, I felt it some how became less Mac and more PC. Something that was emphasised with the appearance of Hackintosh systems.

Dont get me wrong, I wouldn't turn down a Macbook, but having looked on ebay, they are still a little out of my funds. I've seen several 15" G4 Powerbooks selling for under or around £100 (think thats about $160). Which is within my budget for a spare machine for light browsing and writing my tech blog when I'm staying at my gf's. Compared to similar priced windows laptops, the G4 looks better made and has a nice big display.

One thing i also forgot to mention, being as I like using old tech, (still use an SE occasionally for writing). I need firewire, as I'm still rocking the old scroll wheel 1st Gen Ipod hehe :b&w: . I upgraded it several years ago with a 15gb HD and what can I say, the little fella is still handy to have in the car. I bought a Sansa Fuse to replace it, but it's slow, clunky and rubbish in every way that my old Ipod isn't.

 

[sadmanonatrain]

haemoglobin,

I own a PowerBook G4 1.67 (max RAM, stock HD) and I can tell you that even seven years on it is still a very capable machine!

Web browsing is a pleasure with most sites. Some of the more Flash heavy sites bog the machine down, but for the most part it just makes scrolling choppy.

The browser 'TenFourFox' is regularly updated and is probably one of the best browsers for G4 Macs.

You may have problems running Flash online but I know that a team of people have hacked newer versions to improve its performance on PowerPC machines.

Using YouTube within a browser does not yield favorable results. A workaround for this is a program called 'MacTubes'. It is a standalone player for YouTube and it can be set to use QuickTime to view a video. I have had very good results using this software. It plays YouTube videos as if they were in a browser!

I am running Mac OS 10.5.8 at the moment- its performance and stability is is all I could ask for!

You may want to watch out for a dead PRAM battery. My PowerBook refused to start up so I decided to desolder it.

Even my 1.00GHz PowerBook handles the Internet surprisingly well!

Don't let anyone discourage you from getting one because of its age or processor architecture.

You will feel a large deal of accomplishment when you have tweaked and hacked a older Mac so that it can compete with the best of them!

If you are offered one of the newer PowerBooks for a fair price I'd say take it!

 

[Gorgonops]

If you're buying it for nostalgia the late model Powerbook G4s are "nice" machines, except when they aren't. (IE, when you hit a web page that lays on the flash/javascript/html5/etc and slows the thing to a crawl. The fans will flick on, the machine will heat up to the point you can bake cookies, and you'll be sad. Trying to play h.264-encoded video at resolutions higher than SD is another sure way to do it.) I would never actually recommend one as a daily driver in today's world; speed aside it's just plain getting too hard to find modern software that runs on them, and that includes the OS itself.

(Granted there aren't many attacks out there in the wild that actually target PPC machines running Tiger or Leopard, but you will be running a system with well known and unpatched security holes in the OS and unless you're willing to completely disable Flash and Java you'll also be running with your fly unzipped on the web.)

The biggest known problem with the 15" Al G4s is the memory slot failure. So far as I know it affects all the later Als with the possible exception of the oddball and somewhat rare *very last* model, the "High Res 1.67" that used PC2-4200 DDR2 memory instead of the PC2700 DDR of the earlier models. (I'm actually pretty miffed that my practically mint 1.5Ghz unit at some point while in storage decided to quit talking to its second memory slot. The difference between one and two GB of RAM frankly doesn't matter that much if you're running software that actually works well on these machines but it's still annoying.) Early 15" models also had a problem with white spots developing on the screen over time, but I'm pretty sure that was fixed with the 1.33Ghz and later ones. (Every single one of the 1.0/1.25Ghz first-batch 15" Als my company bought back in 2004 had the issue.)

Personally I think Leopard sucks on all G4 machines so I've never upgraded my Al's from Tiger. (I rolled back the one I did try it on.) I guess some people are happy with it but so far as I'm concerned these machines are happiest back in 2005. Turn the clock even to 2008 and they start to suffer. But, hey, if you're happily using a Pismo for the same things you intend to do with the Al it's going to seem like Warp Speed by comparison. So sure, as long as you know you're buying a time capsule go for it.

 

[haemogoblin]

Hi guys

No I'm definitely not expecting it to run like my Hp DV7 or desktop PC. I've seen the YouTube video, booting the model powerbook I'm thinking of buying, next to its intel based counterpart, the intel beats it hands down.

However as it has been pointed out, compared to my Pismo it will still be damn fast. I've held off buying a new mac for years, simply because I had a terrible experience with the white G3 Ibook, I had the 12" and the 14", both had the GPU fail and after that I lost all trust in new 2003-2005 era Apple laptops. Earlier this year I bought a pismo off eBay for £10 and found it had the xlr8 CPU board inside. Which I took out and installed in my Pismo, the G4 really gave it a boost!

I have been doing a spot of research and I did read about the memory slot fault, my main concern was any sort of GPU, BGA soldering issues. Which thus far I'm relieved to find isn't and issue with the G4 PB, unless I've just not found reference to it yet. I don't mind taking machines apart, I spent most of last year rebuilding my Macintosh Plus, the Ibook is by far the worst machine I have ever worked on, removing the hdd is like pulling teeth.

Some of you may disagree with me, but over the years I've felt Apples support for hardware has really begun to suck, dropping products 2-3 years old and leaving people high and dry. I was looking at the ipad recently and read that the original is no longer receiving updates, it's essentially been dropped. It's put me off investing in anything new, I'm content with getting the older tech and giving it a purpose

 

[NJRoadfan]

My 1.25Ghz Powerbook G4 was victim to Apple's "forced obsolesce" program. Flash Player killed the machine for any sort of internet use. The alternate of HTML5 video is even slower than Flash on these machines. I was forced to retire it early last year. Meanwhile Windows laptops from the same time period can still run the latest stuff.... somehow.

 

[haemogoblin]

NJRoadfan - Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise that I've never had ability to afford a cutting edge Apple Product, I think I would be pretty miffed after spending so much money for it to be dropped like a stone within a couple of years. The fact is yes, technology does move on fast, look at the progression of the Ipad. I still believe companies should support products for a reasonable length of time, especially when users are investing a lot of money in to their products. Not everyone can afford to upgrade every two years, spending up and over $1000.

From what I know. Apple was having a lot of trouble with Motorola and IBM when the G4 and G5 was out, the switch to Intel was born out of necessity. Still it was no reason to drop support for relatively new machines.

This thread has really given me a lot to mull over and I'm now on the fence, wondering if I go G4 or Intel. Both laptops look identical aside from the intel being a little slimmer.

In reference to Flash, when it first appeared, I thought it was great. But as time when by and it became more integral to website development, I felt it was became a resource hungry, clunky platform. I'm not a programmer, i dont know how to make a thing from flash. I just know a website should not kill a computer or make a laptop's internal fan kick in. Thats what 3D gaming is for!

 

[beachycove]

I prefer my 12" PowerBook G4 for many uses to my 2013 15" MBP: the G4's keyboard is IMHO better (I do not think the chicklet keyboards to be particularly good); the size of the G4 suits me best probably 80% of the time; the PowerBook is by now effectively expendable (losable, breakable), which actually makes me want to bring it places and put it to use — as haemogoblin says, precisely because it is not worth a ton of money, I feel more comfortable carrying it around; and it runs a wider range of my existing stack of software than the MBP. There is little that it will not do.

Now, obviously the MBP is way better for some things, like, say, batch converting AVI to MP4, which I would not think of trying on the PowerBook. Otherwise? — meh. And since batch conversion doesn't happen very often around here, i probably should never have bought the thing.

Tools that perform well for their intended uses are pleasant to use, I use things that are pleasant to use, the PowerBook performs really well for me in many daily tasks, and so the PowerBook tends to get the more regular use.

Go get yourself an Al G4.

 

[haemogoblin]

You raise a pretty valid point, the lid of my Pismo has scratches all over it but I dont care. I've two more Pismo's in the attic boxed up, both work and both looked like new. I bought them for parts, because I know eventually the hinges will go on my PB or the DC power board or the DVD drive, the list goes on. My main laptop is a 17.5" HP Pavilion DV7, it has this nice metallic swirl paint job all over the case. I bought this off my father after he bought it for playing WoW and decided after 5-6 months that he preferred using his desktop system.

It is a great laptop and more then powerful for my needs, except it is huge! 17.5" is a great display, but that laptop never leaves the house. Its heavy, large and I'm terrified I'll drop and dint it or find some way of messing up the case.

So I use the Pismo, its 13 years old, probably less CPU power then my Phone, but I can tuck it in my bag along with the charger and not worry if I find a scratch on the lid when i take it out to use it.

I've decided to hold off on the 15" Powerbook, might leave it until after Christmas. For now, I might look in to ways of improving the Pismo. Buying a new battery being one of them.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Once you have a nice Albook, you'll want to keep it that way. So you might be more worried about scratches than you expect. The machine wasn't cheap new, but I got my use out of it. Normally I don't use a laptop for my main machine, only when I travel (which isn't all that often). That alone is likely why it lasted as long as it did. Its replacement, a hand-me-down Dell Inspiron e1405 will likely live for a few more years. I really can't justify a laptop purchase when I rarely use one to begin with. The most use that Inspiron saw since I got it was during an extended power outage after Sandy.

 

[Gorgonops]

You could always intentionally look for a beater Albook if you'd be worried about scratching or otherwise defiling a pristine one. Als, unlike Titaniums, are tough enough to withstand some minor dents without being fundamentally structurally compromised. (Once a Ti starts looking shabby it's going to feel shabby, act shabby, and sooner or later decide to seize up its display hinges for no reason.) The one thing you've got to watch out for if you go there is if the laptop were ever dropped face down while open or otherwise had too much pressure applied to the hinges. (Like if someone tried opening the display to a wider angle than the hinge physically allows.) I've seen several with the box-like housing of the hinge cracking loose from the display panel, rendering the display wobbly.

Honestly of course I do have to say if you're really intending to use this as a "bait" computer to do real work on instead of risking your pretty and nice new laptop you might be better served by looking at, I dunno, a Chromebook or a gently used Core Duo 2-ish vintage Thinkpad-ish quality business notebook. Unless you're really getting this specifically to run PowerPC software you already have and don't want to part with you'll deal with a lot fewer "if, and, or but"-s for about the same money as a decent example of a G4 still goes for.

 

[commodorejohn]

You can swing YouTube at 360 or possibly even 480 on a 1.67GHz AlBook if you use one of the dedicated player programs rather than Flash. Combine that with TenFourFox (and NoScript, ideally) and it's quite usable for a lot of things.

 

[haemogoblin]

I've been looking at Chromebooks funnily enough, but if I'm honest I get the distinct impression I wouldn't get along with one. My GF loves Chrome, personally I have always been a Firefox guy. I've tried Chrome many times, but I just didn't find it as easy to use. After all that I have read about Chromebooks, they sound awfully restrictive in terms of what software they can run and what you can and can't do without a net connection. I often find I'm actually more productive when I'm not online, without the distractions of social media sites. Plus as stated I need firewire for my Ipod, the Chromebook has neither the hardware nor the ability to run Itunes

Another reason Chrome OS might not be for me, is that I have no wish to live in the "Cloud' ecosystem. I like having my pictures, my music, my personal data on my hard drive where only I have access to it. I admit I'm probably old school here, but frankly I dont trust corporations like Google with my personal data. The question of who see's my data with or without my knowledge is too much of a grey area. It's like putting your private diary in the dressing table of a complete stranger and trusting that they will never sneak a peak when your not around.

Almost all of my computer gear is well looked after, apart from a slightly scuffed Pismo ;-) So if i bought an G4 PB, the thing probably wouldn't get dented, I'd buy a decent case for it. But still at least I wouldn't be crying if it happened.

 

[commodorejohn]

I admit I'm probably old school here, but frankly I dont trust corporations like Google with my personal data.

Wish a lot more people were this "oldschool."

 

[TheMacGuy]

I find it best to run an extention called "YouTube5" in Safari for my PowerBook. You can set the quality of the video you want it to load, let's say 480p. It will load the video in HTML5 at 480p. Replaces Flash in terms of YouTube and loads fairly fast. Extentions require a newer version of Safari that requires 10.5.8 or later. Plus, it will work on PPC and it is still being developed.

The one thing I have noticed on the PowerBook using YouTube5 is the fact that I have to let it buffer the video until it is at least 75% of the way done or it bogs down the video card and drops frames like crazy, and that's at 360p on a 30Mbps connection. But hey, it's let's you use the native YouTube home page, and not some 3rd party app.

The nice part about all the AlBooks are the fact they use the AirPort Extreme card (the later ones were integrated), which can still be used on most modern networks. It still works with my 6th Gen (802.11ac) AirPort Extreme without hiccups.