Questions about iBook

I recently was given 3 Ibooks
Memory 128 mb
Processor 600 MHz PowerPc G3
Running os 10.2.8.
Now my questions. Is it worth upgrading the memory or anything else on this ibook? This is not my primary computer. If possible I would just use it get on the internet and other simple applications. I recently started my masters classes, and this seems easier to carry than my other larger computer. I figured since i have 3 of them, if something does go wrong with one of them i can use the spare parts to get it running.
Thanks for your time. It is my first time really working with macs, so wish me luck.

It's not really necessary to install more RAM especially if your just going to be at 10.2... I'm running 10.3 with mine and I still only have the factory RAM in it...

Welcome to the Forums, and also good luck newbee!
iMacKid500

so its really not worth the money installing more RAM. it should be able to handle much of what i want?

how did you manage getting your hands on three free ibooks?

im a teacher and our district is going away with using macs. They will not support them and they prefer we do not use them. i was supposed to give up, but our IT guy said to keep them for my use. and try not to use them in the classroom.

128MB of RAM would render the machine totally unusable. OSX is a RAM hog (much like any other modern OS...). The more it has, the happier it is. 512MB is the LEAST amount of RAM I'd be ok with running OSX on. And on that computer it's going to be especially painful with 128MB because it's going to be swapping to the disk constantly, and that thing has a very, very, VERY slow hard disk.

You really, really, REALLY ought to upgrade the RAM. Maxing it out would only cost you $100 from Crucial:
http://crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=iBook (G3 600MHz)

Or, if you get it from OWC, putting as much RAM in that thing as it will support would cost you less than $65.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iBooks-PowerBooks/G3-iBook/

For that price, you'd be crazy not to do it. And if you don't want to spend $65, you can add 256MB-which would TRIPLE the amount of RAM it has now-for less than $25 from OWC.

thanks, thats what i wanted to hear. i dont mind spending the money as long as it would work for me. i like the $65 price. i might go with that. or should i just spend the extra money. any other upgrades i should make?

Upgrading such an old iBook could get a little pricey. The computer you have is worth about $240. My advice is, don't put over a $100 into it. I would sell all three and buy a used MacBook or G4 iBook.

utepminerfan said:

thanks, thats what i wanted to hear. i dont mind spending the money as long as it would work for me. i like the $65 price. i might go with that. or should i just spend the extra money. any other upgrades i should make?

Click to expand...

Nope, the $65 for the 512MB stick from OWC will be just fine. No reason really to go with Crucial unless you want to; the OWC RAM will work fine.

You'd also see some benefit from upgrading the hard drive to a new drive (note that you'll need either a copy of OSX or a set of restore discs for the iBook to do this); the new drives are going to be a fair bit faster than the drive that's in it now. However, as MacKid pointed out, once you reach a certain point it just isn't worth it anymore from an objective standpoint.

If you want to upgrade the hard drive, there are plenty of options out there for you. I'm guessing you won't need much storage space, and small capacity laptop drives are pretty inexpensive. Either of these two (the latter in particular) would likely get you a noticeable increase in performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144378
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822146046

But again... I'm not sure it's worth it. The machine is never going to be all that fast-the CPU and graphics cards are going to choke it, if nothing else. On the one hand, to me, $70 for a 7200rpm hard drive and $65 for RAM isn't a bad deal to breathe a bit of life into an old machine that you didn't pay anything for, but on the other MacKid has a good point.