ibook g4 with leopard

I have an iBook G4 with 640 mb of memory, running the latest version of Leopard. Machine runs painfully slow, to the point of being virtually unusable -- particularly if I have more than 1 or 2 applications open at once. I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to speed things up?

Would it be better for me to user an older version of OS X, since I'm on an older machine?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

640MB of RAM is the basic problem here. Any older version of OS X is going to be a) less functional (with one exception) and b) need more RAM as well, so the answer is ... more RAM.

Before we move on to that, though, another question: how much free space do you have on your hard disk? This can play a HUGE factor if the speed is "virtually unusable."

Mac OS X -- any version -- likes to have lots of free space, both for temp files and for virtual memory (and other stuff). As a rule of thumb, you really should try to keep AT LEAST 8GB of space free for best performance.

Okay, now on to the RAM. There's 256MB of RAM hard-soldered in there, can't be removed or upgraded, which means you have one removable 512MB stick in there. Toss that and replace it with a 1GB PC2100 or PC2700 SDRAM and you're good to go. Should cost you around $30 and will make a WORLD of difference.