[geeks] Replacement MacBook question

[Michael Parson]

On Sun, 7 Sep 2008, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>> On Sun, 7 Sep 2008, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> My wife's powerbook (867 MHz PowerPC with a fresh, Apple replaced
>>> battery and a new keyboard) is showing it's age. She was unable to
>>> book our daughter's birthday party at Chuck E. CHeese's because her
>>> browser was too old (Safari for the PowerPC has been capped, AFAIK).
>>
>> I'm running 10.5.4 on both my Dual G5 tower and my MacBook, both have
>> Safari 3.1.2 (5525.20.1).
>
> Actually, I just checked (rather than keep on shooting from th ehip
> and missing my target - it is an iBook G4/800[0], and while not
> offically supported, it appears that an upgrade to the latest OS X
> (10.5) may be possible.[1]

I did have 10.5 running on my G4/733Mhz Digital Audio using the
OpenFirmware hack.  It worked.  It was noticably slower, but it was
functional.  I think there are some other features, at the CPU level,
other than just a few extra clock cycles, that got introduced with the
867Mhz processor.  Maybe extra threads or something.  There are also
some assumtions around what your minimum video card would be.  My card
didn't offer very good Core Animation support, etc.

> Hmm, maybe a visit from the RAM & HD fairy, along with a little
> trickery to get the system installed might make this machine last
> another year or two...
>
> Much to ponder (though part of me wants her to upgrade to a new
> laptop...)...

I love my MacBook, it's the black model, 2nd generation, 2Ghz Core2Duo.
I've since upgraded it to 3Gigs of RAM and a 320 gig HD.  It is
unbelievablely fast, hard to imagine that the newer ones are even
faster.

> Lionel
>
> [0] http://lowendmac.com/ibooks/12in-ibook-g4-800-mhz.html
> [1] http://lowendmac.com/osx/leopard/unsupported.html

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org