Bare minimum?

[MartinAustin]

Hi all,

I am interested in getting a used/refurbished iBook 12" G4, and was curious to get some opinions on bare minimum specifications to run a couple applications:

Macromedia Studio MX: I do quite a bit of website work, and while I am not too concerned about Dreamweaver as I do mostly hand-coding, my concern is running Flash and Fireworks efficiently.

Adobe Photoshop CS2: I don't do any overly complicated renderings, and I am not all that concerned with lightning fast results if I were to get more complex.

Obviously I'm going to get one with at least 512MB RAM ... but I am more concerned with which process these applications will run efficiently on. Also, do iBooks have the standard ability to interface with an analog monitor (not DVI)?

Thanks for your opinions!

 

[Avalon]

As he refurbished iBooks are quite recent, they will be quite decent for what you want to do. Perhaps adding some memory could be a good idea, as it will make it snappier.
But be sure to have at least 512MB, Adobe's Creative Suite 2 won't even install on anything less than 384MB, and with 256MB, OS X is pretty slugish anyway.
The iBook has an miniVGA connector to connect an external, analog monitor. It comes with an adapter to standard VGA. But it is limited to mirror the content of the build-in screen to the external one.
If you want to use it as second monitor, to enlarge your desktop, you need a little hack. I don't remember exactly what it's called or where to find it, but if you search on this forum, you should find the link, as this has been discussed several times already.

 

[yuwing]

If you're doing that kinda of work, i'd get 40 gig harddrive at least

i don't know if this will be primary computer or not, but after 6 months, with all the PSD files and mp3s (granted u download these), u'll run out of space fast and that's not good.

did i mention that tiger needs 20gig of ur total harddrive space?
unless you reformat it of course. but i'd be too lazy to haha. so yah, afer you got ur ibook, u'll see that u'll only have like 10 gigs left for your stuff.

so choose wisely. I havn't run any photoshop on my ibook, but i've found it very sluggish when working on MSoffice, >_> Maybe it's Microsoft's fault for bad coding... i'm not sure. watever it is, just get lots of ram! 768-1gig would do for the kind of work u're doing.

my specs are:
12.1" ibook
G4 1.33 Ghz
512mb ram
40gig harddrive
ATI radeon 9550 32mb

 

[ghettochild]

did i mention that tiger needs 20gig of ur total harddrive space?
unless you reformat it of course. but i'd be too lazy to haha. so yah, afer you got ur ibook, u'll see that u'll only have like 10 gigs left for your stuff.

that's simply false. even if you install tiger w/ all its components it shouldn't take more than 12GB. simply reinstall the OS when you get the ibook and you can free a bunch of GB by not installing all the printer drivers/additional fonts/languagues/etc. that you don't need.

on my imac and ibook, tiger needs about 5GB and 3.5GB, respectively. so don't be fooled by that 20GB...

 

[Avalon]

A full Tiger installation takes less than 4GB, if you install everything that comes with the Mac when you buy it (complete iLife, Apple Works etc) 11-12GB is about realistic, but never will you attain 20GB of a fresh install.

 

[iRule]

yep ive got a 699 ibook which i bought before the update and it works fine