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Archive for the ‘Upgrades’ Category

My little, used PowerBook is maxed out. Or is it?

Laptops & Notebooks, PowerBooks, Upgrades / 0 Comments

I have an old 12 inch 1.33GHz PowerBook with maxed out 1.25GB ram and a 5400rpm 80GB hard drive. I love this thing as it was the first computer I bought and cant fathom selling it (especially since it runs OS 9 baby! BAM!), but it is showing its age.

I’m wondering what I can do to increase it’s power to at least watch YouTube videos or video podcasts without jittery playback. Right now I simply use it for email, project timing and anything non video related (iCal, iTunes, web articles, etc), which it does fine (also a great companion on road trips) but would like to increase it’s usefulness with better video and Flash performance.

Would it be worth it to upgrade the HD to a SSD? Is there a way to upgrade the graphics card? Anything else I might want to try? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
- Tyler

The only thing left for you to do to that little well-used Mac would be upgrade the hard drive to a faster unit, but even that will not change your Flash video playback performance.

To get a performance upgrade for YouTube, you are going to have to move to an Intel Mac. That does not mean you need to retire your PowerBook, but it is doing all that it can now.

- Jacob

Can a G4 iMac be used wirelessly?

G4, Hardware, Upgrades, Wireless, iMac / 0 Comments

Jacob,
We have a new MacBook Pro set up with a Time Capsule and an 5 year old iMac G4 and are wondering if the G4 will accept an Airport Extreme card or Airport card. We’d like to use the old IMac wirelessly if possible.
Please advise.

Thank you in advance,
- Garth

Yes, the G4 iMacs can take an Airport card. Depending on the generation you can get an 802.11B card or an 802.11B/G card.

• If you have a 700 MHz or 800MHz processor you need a FastMac APP-0968 Wireless AirPort 802.11b Card.

• If you have a 1GHz to 1.25GHz processor you can get an Apple M8881LL/A AirPort Extreme Card.

It will install under the metal plate on the bottom of the iMac and is easy to do, just make sure to attache the built-in antenna cable after you slide it in the slot.

- Jacob

How can I update my Power PC Macs from 10.4 to 10.5.6?

Mac OS X, Upgrades / 0 Comments

Hey there,
I recently bought a couple of trade-ins from you that are running 10.4 and am trying to install OX 10.5.6. When I put the disc in, it does not open the window for the software install. I go to the hard drive and see the disc, try to click there to open the window and nothing.

I then single click the icon on the desktop, then go to “file” and open from there and still nothing. This happens on both the computers. I reinserted the disk into my iMac 24″ and the window pops up just fine as soon as the disc is inserted. Any thoughts on why the other 2 computers won’t open the update disc?

Thanks,
- Brian

You can install from that disk by starting up holding down the [C] key with the disc in the drive.

That will get your Power Macs booted from the installer and allow you to install the OS. Choose the Option to do an Archive and Install, or Erase and Install if you don’t need the data on the drive, and that will insure that you have a clean OS install.

- Jacob

Can I upgrade my iMac DDR2 RAM to the faster DDR3 RAM?

RAM, Upgrades, iMac / 0 Comments

Jacob,

I have a new 24 inch iMac that has the 1066 front bus. However, the computer came with ddr2 memory running 800 hz, Can I switch these memory chip to ddr3 running 1066 Hz? I just wanted to make sure before I did it!

Thanks for a quick answer.
- Barney

Despite the speed of you systems frontside bus, the RAM you can use is limited to what type of RAM slots you have. DDR2 RAM and DDR3 RAM are not interchangeable and unfortunately there in no way to use the faster RAM in your system.

RAM speed should not be too much of a concern though. Your RAM is not the slowest part of your system, the hard drive is. Look at upgrading to a Solid State Drive (SSD) to see noticeable performance increases.

- Jacob