Performance loss over time?

Hi,

I just bought my first Apple today. Don't laugh; it's actually a third-hand eMac (not iMac, as I thought at first) 700MHz model. The old one. Well, I got it for just over $60 USD and it seems to be in good working order.. however.. the last owner didn't know anything about 'puters in general and therefore never really touched it.

As I am a systems engineer and have been working with puters for just about 2 decades I can say I know my Windows .. however, I never touched Mac OS before and from all the forum posts I've read the past day I didn't know what to expect from the eMac. Anyway - it turns out to be the 700MHz model, G4 processor, 1Gb memory (upgraded in the past I suppose). I haven't set it up yet as I'm still at work right now but can't wait to get started on it!

The last owner showed it in a working state and I noticed a truely immense amount of applications on the Dock.. I was wondering if there's any way to tell if the amount of installed applications actually 'hogs' the machine or does it differ a lot from Windows in that way? The 700MHz already can't compare to Wintels as it seems pretty fast from what I've seen so far..

EDIT: oh, for those who are interested: it's running Mac OSX 10.5 [which surprised me as well as it doesn't seem to be supported].

Well, it's a common misconception both on Windows and on Mac OS X that the number of installed applications in and of itself depreciates the performance of a machine.

This would be true if the amount of free space on the hard drive was less than 20% of its capacity. Additionally, if many of the installed applications were launching automatically at startup (on Windows machines, seeing tons of icons in the system tray from a cold boot would indicate this), those running programs would consume memory resources and thus rob available memory from other applications.

With that said, just because there's a ton of applications installed doesn't mean the machine is being hobbled by it. And since Mac OS X doesn't have a registry, there's no cause for concern about corruption or excess size.

I am concerned that this machine is running 10.5 (Leopard), since Leopard requires an 867MHz processor at a minimum. If that machine could be stepped back to 10.4, it would likely run a lot better.

@CWA : You're partly right about the amount of applications being irrelevant to a "natural" slowdown. The problem might as well be the Windows registry in that case. After using my normal desktop for over a year, it becomes dreadfully slow until I reinstall the whole shabang but that may as well be related to the registry as you said.

My best guess is that the original owner modified a certain file on the installation disc to skip the processor speed checks done by the Leopard installation (something about Distribution.dist ??). Guessing by the last owner's words that he knew nothing about computers (couldn't tell me the type/processor speed/memory/etc) it was done 'before his time'. I'll give it a test run and see how it performs though.

Any ideas on a performance benchmarking tool?

I've had the same copy of OS X for years with no slowdowns. I think as long as you keep sufficient hard drive space and don't have a bunch of background processes - you'll be able to enjoy OS X without reinstalls - usually a new update comes out and that is when I do my reinstalls..

jaapengel79 said:

@CWA : You're partly right about the amount of applications being irrelevant to a "natural" slowdown. The problem might as well be the Windows registry in that case. After using my normal desktop for over a year, it becomes dreadfully slow until I reinstall the whole shabang but that may as well be related to the registry as you said.

Click to expand...

What you're experiencing, I like to call "Windows rot". Over time, the registry becomes so large and convoluted that in my opinion, it's best to do a clean install at least once a year (or revert back to a backup, which I often do as well).

My best guess is that the original owner modified a certain file on the installation disc to skip the processor speed checks done by the Leopard installation (something about Distribution.dist ??). Guessing by the last owner's words that he knew nothing about computers (couldn't tell me the type/processor speed/memory/etc) it was done 'before his time'. I'll give it a test run and see how it performs though.

Click to expand...

Yes, that's typically how it's done. As efficient as OS X is, Leopard does like LOTS of memory. So, if you've got at least 1GB (preferably more), it will likely be OK under light use. If you actually plan on running any robust applications, I would recommend stepping back to Tiger if you intend to keep that machine. Tiger (10.4) was a great OS, Leopard added a lot of eye candy and extraneous features, but Tiget was pretty sound in its own right - certainly on-par with or better than Windows XP/Vista in terms of feature set.

Any ideas on a performance benchmarking tool?

Click to expand...

Try XBench

I've got a 1.25GHz eMac running 10.4 and it runs great. I don't think I'll upgrade it to Leopard unless absolutely necessary, although I think I only have 512MB of RAM in it. I'd recommend stepping down to Tiger along with cwa.

cwa107 said:

I am concerned that this machine is running 10.5 (Leopard), since Leopard requires an 867MHz processor at a minimum. If that machine could be stepped back to 10.4, it would likely run a lot better.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I for the fun of it installed 10.5 on a 667Mhz G4 Powermac. It runs and for basic tasks not that bad, but it was still a bit draggy compared to Tiger on the same machine. I had 1GB RAM also BTW.

Another vote for going to 10.4 Tiger and also bumping up the RAM a bit.

@All of the above : thanks well, the problem is, I got this machine for about $65 and not even sure I want to keep it (it might end up @ my mom's) so I don't want to invest a big deal in it.. first have to see if I can manage OS X in case my parents run into issues with it and call me

Anyway - it would be a bit .. overkill .. to just buy 10.4. For now (I'm home in the meanwhile) I'm testdriving it and only 'half' the system works.. the Preferences menu doesn't open at all (no error, it just doesn't do *anything*), Time Machine doesn't budge, can't change system date & time either which probably messes up Time Machine as well, several preinstalled pieces of software from the last owner don't work.. strangely enough it's running 10.5.7 which is a very recent update as far as I can tell but I'm trying to reinstall that update now. It's been taking 15 minutes so far and it's 76% done so that means either

A) The machine actually updates things
B) It forgets to give me an error message that I'm already at the latest version [might be too Windows minded there!]
C) It doesn't do much and just lets me believe it's updating

Bottom line: I don't wanna invest big bucks for an OS for a machine that I don't know I'll be using for long, so first I'm trying to get as much out of it as I can, but thanks dozens for the tips on 10.4 and that it will absolutely run smoother!