02-05-2005, 07:01 PM

I am curious as to what you guys think my first steps toward improving my G4 would be. I have a dual 1G MDD with 768mb of ram, I had to drop 512 due to a bad stick. So I will at least be stepping it up that much more again. But here is what I do-a lot of work in Photoshop, Illustrator, some minor video and music work as well. That and heavy internet usage. I guess I just want to optimize my machine and get the most out of it that I possibly can for as long as possible. Any opinions and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

02-06-2005, 05:01 AM

Your Mac still is a pretty fast computer, for the usage you're describing you don't need much to upgrade. Getting an additional 512MB will give you lots of reserve and will be a sufficient upgrade.

I have a single 1.25GHz MDD, and I have pretty much the same usage you have. I just upped the memory from 768MB to 1.25GB recently, and I'm quite happy with the performance.

I also added an additional 120GB harddisk for more storage, and a USB 2.0 card as the original 2 USB 1.1 weren't enough for me.

I might upgrade it someday later with a dual CPU board, but for the moment they're too expensive and I don't really need it...

02-06-2005, 05:47 AM

Maybe I need to get some good maintenece methods then. I just feel like this thing is dragging for what it is. Any ideas about that?

02-06-2005, 10:54 AM

I just do the usual maintenance:
Macjanitor to clean ot the logs, Disk Utility to repair disk permissions after installing software, and cleaning ot the caches...

02-06-2005, 11:30 AM

I don't know what is going on then...I do all of those things fairly regularly, and it is so slow sometimes. More lately than ever. I just have no idea what common problems I may be facing that would be causing this...or not so common.

02-06-2005, 02:51 PM

Hmm...that's pretty strange...

What about your harddisk? Is it nearly full? That can slowdown a system too.

02-06-2005, 07:10 PM

I have two 80G drives...one that contains OSX and is about half full, and the other is barely used at all. The other thing that I forgot to mention is the glitchy beeping type sounds i get from the machine every so often. I have no idea what that is.

02-06-2005, 09:22 PM

Try a fresh install maybe? That might help to speed it up... good luck.

When you hear that beeping, jsut take off the side and lsiten for it agian and find where it's comming from.

02-07-2005, 04:01 AM

Originally Posted by shaun89

Try a fresh install maybe? That might help to speed it up...

That's the Windows way of solving problems...

Rob, did you run the Apple Hardware test that came with your Mac? Strange beeping sounds definitely isn't normal. As shaun89 said, you might try to locate that beeping sound.

02-07-2005, 07:08 AM

No i didnt run the hardware test. I will have to give that a shot this evening. hopefully i can figure something out with that. Thanks.