Help with an old iMac G4

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My boyfriend's mom has an old iMac G4 that she uses regularly - but it is as slow as molasses. I've poked around on it a bit and I can see they have 15bazillion pictures from their digital camera on there, all in neat folders going back probably 5 or more years, as well as 17bazillion emails sitting in Mail. I seriously doubt they've ever done any kind of maintenance on it. Now my BF wants to load music into iTunes on it to load up his iPhone (I won't let him put his horrible music on my MacBook!) but I tend to think the hard drive must be almost full (haven't checked). It works fine but needs a bit of an overhaul. Loading anything new onto it - any programs or anything - is out of the question. It's also running whatever operating system came with it when they bought it.

I thought maybe getting an external hard drive and moving all those pictures off to free up some space would help, but since it is from 1999 or 2000, I wonder how compatible a newer EHD would be with it? And in order for it to have a version of iTunes that will even work with newer iPhones, will it need an updated operating system? It's only used for basics - internet, email, etc.

Any suggestions? I'd like to get it to the point where it doesn't take 20 minutes to start up or 15 minutes to open a program. But I also don't want to kill it! Part of me wants to suggest they just take it to a Mac Repair place and let the pros fix it up, but I'm pretty good at this stuff (relatively simple stuff), so I'm willing to try.

Thank you for any suggestions,
Jessy
 

pigoo3

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Questions:

- What OS version is the iMac G4 running?
- What size hard drive is in it?
- How full is the hard drive?
- How much ram does it have
- What speed cpu is in it?

* Nick
 
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walker328
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I dunno. I can check my email on all of them. They're pretty.
Questions:

- What OS version is the iMac G4 running?
- What size hard drive is in it?
- How full is the hard drive?
- How much ram does it have
- What speed cpu is in it?

* Nick

I will find all this out later on tonight and report back. Please stand by.

Thanks!
 

bobtomay

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15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Which iPhone does he want to sync - save you from doing all that stuff.

If it's an iPhone 4, 4S or 5 - it's not going to sync with a G4.
All of these phones require OS X 10.6.8 at a minimum which requires an Intel Mac.

Any iPhone that has iOS version 5 or later will also not sync to a G4 - also requires 10.6.8 at minimum.

edit:
With Nick's requested info, he can help you get some maintenance done on that G4 though.
 
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walker328
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I dunno. I can check my email on all of them. They're pretty.
Which iPhone does he want to sync - save you from doing all that stuff.

If it's an iPhone 4, 4S or 5 - it's not going to sync with a G4.
All of these phones require 10.6.8 at a minimum which requires an Intel Mac.

Any iPhone that has iOS 5 or later will also not sync to a G4 - also requires 10.6.8.

edit:
With Nick's requested info, he can help you get some maintenance done on that G4 though.

Wow, good to know! Thank you... I'll tell him. Dude just needs to cough up the $$$ and buy his own computer.
I'll still report back with that other info.
 

pigoo3

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Agree with bobtomay...if it's a newer iPhone...that G4 iMac is going to be too old.

But once we have the OS, specs, and hard drive info...we may be able to improve things a bit from a speed perspective.:)

- Nick
 
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And walker328 remind them the G4 iMacs first appeared in late 2001 with sales commencing January 2002. They are like dinosaurs compared to modern machines.
 

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