iBook speed upgrades??

My wife has an iBook with a 700 Mhz processor and 128 MB of RAM. Everything seems to run extremely slow on it--even surfing the internet is slow with a cable connection. I've considered upgrading the RAM by 512 MB--will this even make a dent in the speed? Or, is there a way to also upgrade the processor?

bmcgui said:

My wife has an iBook with a 700 Mhz processor and 128 MB of RAM. Everything seems to run extremely slow on it--even surfing the internet is slow with a cable connection. I've considered upgrading the RAM by 512 MB--will this even make a dent in the speed? Or, is there a way to also upgrade the processor?

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You will notice a huge difference if you upgrade the ram. If it's OS X that it's running and you only have 128mb of ram it will run like molasses. If it's a G4 700mhz processor adding ram will drastically increase the performance.

Thanks for the response. I think that it's running 10.3.8. If I did upgrade the RAM, would it be possible to run OS 10.4? I'd like to upgrade some of the programs.

Edit: I also think that the processor is a G3

G'day bmcgui & welcome to Mac-Forums,

Do you have the g3 or g4? What size iBook ...12" or 14' ?

It's a 12" iBook with the 700 MHz PowerPC G3 processor. It is running Mac OS X version 10.3.9.

Your iBook has 128mb of onboard ram and 1 expansion slot to which you can add a 128mb, 256mb or 512mb RAM stick. I'm not surprised the iBook is slow. Adding as much ram as you can afford will certainly help things run smoother. If you add a 512mb stick you will have a total of 640mb of RAM which is the maximum for your iBook.

Here are some useful links:

iBook G3 Specs page

Crucial.com Ram for iBook

Whatever RAM you end up buying be 100% sure it matches the RAM on your iBook.

Do you have the CD drive model or the Combo DVD/CD drive model as the link to the specs page is for the CD drive model which was released in Nov 2002.

The RAM upgrading side of things is the same though..

I have 1.5 GB of RAM and I used to have 512k, but if anything, it got slower with the added memory. :?