Web Design Forums

tether · 23-07-2008, 07:00

I have a powerbook (g4 1.5ghz) - it was never super-fast, but it seems slower than it used to be. It has 768 mb ram in it, and i think its maximum capacity is 1.25gb. If i stick a new ram thingy in it to bring it up to 1.25 is that likely to make a significant difference to its speed? Or are there other methods that might help speed it up?

thanks.

JonoMarshall · 23-07-2008, 07:01

Maxing the RAM will help, but I'd think about moving to an Intel machine if you need it for work, etc?

Do Gooder · 23-07-2008, 07:16

more ram will help but there comes a time... a macbook can be had for £700 odd and will shit all over your mac

keeping the old mac.. the best thing can be to trim back to earlier versions of software... newer fellas are far more processor and memory hungry.

nothing wrong with working on a mac running 10.3, photoshop 7, illy CS

tether · 23-07-2008, 07:25

thanks, it is for work but for the most part i don't use it for heavy graphics - mainly i do copywriting so i'm thinking i might be able to do one or two things - like ad ram - and get away with it.

I run os 10.4 and when i do use photoshop and illustrator i run old versions of them - on os 9 (though i recently downloaded inkscape)

I was just scrolling through a pdf document 18 pages in length, and its really slow scrolling through it - surely that should be doable easily on my current machine???

it also seems to tie itself in knots sometimes - like often it won't access gmail, but if i restart then it usually does.

Is there some kind of 'cleaning up' i can do that might sort general stuff and with the addition of some more ram might get it running a little better?

Do Gooder · 23-07-2008, 07:31

running os9 is a drain on the computer.. so if you can dump that it will improve things.

it could just be the pdf was a beast.. check its file size.. if it is over 15meg a bit of slowdown would be expected.

some basics to do are:

- clear space on the hd.. at least 10gig
- run the maintenace scripts, rebuild prebindings, clean caches. (i use 'tiger - cache cleaner'. but there's plenty of other software)

JonoMarshall · 23-07-2008, 07:34

In general Macs don't need "cleaning up", how much free HD space do you have? You need to keep 10-15% of your total free so your Mac can defrag everything as you read/write to the disk.

Check under Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor and see what's using up all your system resources... this will also be a good indication of what is the bottleneck on your machine when doing various tasks.

The PDF could be a complicated one with lots of hyperlink layers, etc, how big is it? Does it open fine and then just have issues when moving pages or in general it's slow?

Do Gooder · 23-07-2008, 07:37

and what he sez

tether · 23-07-2008, 08:06

the pdf is 3.6mb, and it scrolls really slow even with no other pdfs open, and only a couple of other apps open, and without 0s9 running.

at the bottom of the Finder windows it tells me i have 16.7gb available - i'm not sure of my hd size but i think it's something like 60gb, maybe 80.

In the Activity Monitor for Adobe Reader it says 920.78MB under Virtual Memory - that's the highest figure there - the next ones down are Firefox at 390 and MobileConnect at 378. Though the Real Memory for Adobe Reader is 161 and there're other things that are quite a bit higher than that for Real Memory.

However, I don't know what any of that means, nor how to go about improving things re that.

I just googled "maintenance script mac", but (this is another thing that sometimes happens) I got a 'network error' message - sometimes i get that with some sites i try to go to - including google searches - i'm going to try restarting, but how would i go about running maintenance scripts, rebuilding prebindings, and cleaning caches? (i've cleared private data in firefox - is there more to cleaning caches than that?)

thanks.

Do Gooder · 23-07-2008, 08:09

that'll just be cleaning firefoxes cache.. you want to do all of them.

google "tiger cache cleaner" it's a wee app that you can do all these things with.

JonoMarshall · 23-07-2008, 08:12

You don't need to clean anything, I suspect your system is just showing its age, try opening other PDFs and see if it's the same? (It either is and your system's slow, or it isn't and you're looking at a weirdly compressed or heavily layered PDF file).

The 920.78mb is RAM, how much RAM does it list as active/inactive/etc at any one time? Sounds like maxing your RAM would help somewhat, but I wouldn't invest too much time or money into what is essentially an old machine.

TeZ · 23-07-2008, 08:15

Don't bother with maxing a old machine imo, maybe invest in a second hand intel mac with a better clock speed.

tether · 23-07-2008, 09:56

I found a pdf that's 4.1mb and it scrolls faster than the 3.6mb one i'm currently working with.

The faster one is non-selectable text and images, all black and white - it looks like it's a scan of a printed book.

The slower one has some colour, including a couple of text items and a logo image at the top of each page, it has a link at the bottom of each page (same link on each page), and the text is selectable.

Is there something I can tell the client to do with her pdfs before she sends them to me to make them scroll faster?

I'll also google the cache cleaner - can't do any harm - even if it doesn't make my machine a supermachine, and i might look at the price of ram too - I dont really want to buy a new machine if i can avoid it.

Pugsley · 23-07-2008, 10:16

save as smallest file size unless it's going to printed properly. Usually looks good enough to read.

Do Gooder · 23-07-2008, 10:18

jolly good idea... need the full version (i.e. paid for) of Acrobat for that mind.

Pugsley · 23-07-2008, 10:21

oh... didn't know that part. Well if she has that get her to save as smallest file size. If not then i don't have a scobby what to. Get a pigeon to deliver a hard copy maybe?

Pugsley · 23-07-2008, 10:22

oh... didn't know that part. Well if she has that get her to save as smallest file size. If not then i don't have a scooby what to. Get a pigeon to deliver a hard copy maybe?

Do Gooder · 23-07-2008, 10:25

ah. yes. no. yes. for the originator of the doc.. save as what you like.

but if you don't want to bother with trying to explain this shit... you can just process the doc yourself through acrobat before reading.

tether · 24-07-2008, 05:49

at the moment under System Memory it lists:
active: 445.87mb
inactive: 224.80mb

Full list of stuff there is:
wired 90 mb
active 445mb
inactive 216 mb
used 752 mb
free 15 mb
VM size 6.37 gb
pages ins/outs 633576/399062

Though I don't know what that stuff means...

When I try and run Tiger cache cleaner, it tells me This application cannot run on this system (1049)

Is there a similar other application somebody'd recommend that might do a similar job?

Thanks.

23-07-2008, 07:00	#1 (permalink)
tether Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 77	slow Mac - more RAM?, or something else? I have a powerbook (g4 1.5ghz) - it was never super-fast, but it seems slower than it used to be. It has 768 mb ram in it, and i think its maximum capacity is 1.25gb. If i stick a new ram thingy in it to bring it up to 1.25 is that likely to make a significant difference to its speed? Or are there other methods that might help speed it up? thanks.

23-07-2008, 07:01	#2 (permalink)
JonoMarshall Day-Glo Jazz Monkey Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Shoreditch, London Posts: 1,129	Maxing the RAM will help, but I'd think about moving to an Intel machine if you need it for work, etc? __________________ Jon Marshall - Graphic Design

23-07-2008, 07:34	#6 (permalink)
JonoMarshall Day-Glo Jazz Monkey Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Shoreditch, London Posts: 1,129	In general Macs don't need "cleaning up", how much free HD space do you have? You need to keep 10-15% of your total free so your Mac can defrag everything as you read/write to the disk. Check under Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor and see what's using up all your system resources... this will also be a good indication of what is the bottleneck on your machine when doing various tasks. The PDF could be a complicated one with lots of hyperlink layers, etc, how big is it? Does it open fine and then just have issues when moving pages or in general it's slow? __________________ Jon Marshall - Graphic Design

23-07-2008, 08:12	#10 (permalink)
JonoMarshall Day-Glo Jazz Monkey Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Shoreditch, London Posts: 1,129	You don't need to clean anything, I suspect your system is just showing its age, try opening other PDFs and see if it's the same? (It either is and your system's slow, or it isn't and you're looking at a weirdly compressed or heavily layered PDF file). The 920.78mb is RAM, how much RAM does it list as active/inactive/etc at any one time? Sounds like maxing your RAM would help somewhat, but I wouldn't invest too much time or money into what is essentially an old machine. __________________ Jon Marshall - Graphic Design

23-07-2008, 10:16	#13 (permalink)
Pugsley L'me at'em. L'me at'em. Join Date: May 2007 Location: Aberdeen, Scotland Posts: 2,751	save as smallest file size unless it's going to printed properly. Usually looks good enough to read. __________________ If your colours are starting to run, let them all run, run away from you. Flux - Bloc Party Design Never Dies A message to newcomers. This is not google. Before you ask us here why not try typing it into google. 60% of the time it works every time. Currently Has: 26 "Keeping it Real" Points, 1 bonus point for being Sexy and a sea urchin.

23-07-2008, 07:16	#3 (permalink)
Do Gooder Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 5,836	more ram will help but there comes a time... a macbook can be had for £700 odd and will shit all over your mac keeping the old mac.. the best thing can be to trim back to earlier versions of software... newer fellas are far more processor and memory hungry. nothing wrong with working on a mac running 10.3, photoshop 7, illy CS

23-07-2008, 07:25	#4 (permalink)
tether Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 77	thanks, it is for work but for the most part i don't use it for heavy graphics - mainly i do copywriting so i'm thinking i might be able to do one or two things - like ad ram - and get away with it. I run os 10.4 and when i do use photoshop and illustrator i run old versions of them - on os 9 (though i recently downloaded inkscape) I was just scrolling through a pdf document 18 pages in length, and its really slow scrolling through it - surely that should be doable easily on my current machine??? it also seems to tie itself in knots sometimes - like often it won't access gmail, but if i restart then it usually does. Is there some kind of 'cleaning up' i can do that might sort general stuff and with the addition of some more ram might get it running a little better?

23-07-2008, 07:31	#5 (permalink)
Do Gooder Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 5,836	running os9 is a drain on the computer.. so if you can dump that it will improve things. it could just be the pdf was a beast.. check its file size.. if it is over 15meg a bit of slowdown would be expected. some basics to do are: - clear space on the hd.. at least 10gig - run the maintenace scripts, rebuild prebindings, clean caches. (i use 'tiger - cache cleaner'. but there's plenty of other software)

23-07-2008, 07:37	#7 (permalink)
Do Gooder Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 5,836	and what he sez

23-07-2008, 08:06	#8 (permalink)
tether Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 77	the pdf is 3.6mb, and it scrolls really slow even with no other pdfs open, and only a couple of other apps open, and without 0s9 running. at the bottom of the Finder windows it tells me i have 16.7gb available - i'm not sure of my hd size but i think it's something like 60gb, maybe 80. In the Activity Monitor for Adobe Reader it says 920.78MB under Virtual Memory - that's the highest figure there - the next ones down are Firefox at 390 and MobileConnect at 378. Though the Real Memory for Adobe Reader is 161 and there're other things that are quite a bit higher than that for Real Memory. However, I don't know what any of that means, nor how to go about improving things re that. I just googled "maintenance script mac", but (this is another thing that sometimes happens) I got a 'network error' message - sometimes i get that with some sites i try to go to - including google searches - i'm going to try restarting, but how would i go about running maintenance scripts, rebuilding prebindings, and cleaning caches? (i've cleared private data in firefox - is there more to cleaning caches than that?) thanks.

23-07-2008, 08:09	#9 (permalink)
Do Gooder Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 5,836	that'll just be cleaning firefoxes cache.. you want to do all of them. google "tiger cache cleaner" it's a wee app that you can do all these things with.

23-07-2008, 08:15	#11 (permalink)
TeZ At the end of production. Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Oxford Posts: 1,150	Don't bother with maxing a old machine imo, maybe invest in a second hand intel mac with a better clock speed.

23-07-2008, 09:56	#12 (permalink)
tether Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 77	I found a pdf that's 4.1mb and it scrolls faster than the 3.6mb one i'm currently working with. The faster one is non-selectable text and images, all black and white - it looks like it's a scan of a printed book. The slower one has some colour, including a couple of text items and a logo image at the top of each page, it has a link at the bottom of each page (same link on each page), and the text is selectable. Is there something I can tell the client to do with her pdfs before she sends them to me to make them scroll faster? I'll also google the cache cleaner - can't do any harm - even if it doesn't make my machine a supermachine, and i might look at the price of ram too - I dont really want to buy a new machine if i can avoid it.

23-07-2008, 10:18	#14 (permalink)
Do Gooder Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 5,836	jolly good idea... need the full version (i.e. paid for) of Acrobat for that mind.

23-07-2008, 10:21	#15 (permalink)
Pugsley L'me at'em. L'me at'em. Join Date: May 2007 Location: Aberdeen, Scotland Posts: 2,751	oh... didn't know that part. Well if she has that get her to save as smallest file size. If not then i don't have a scobby what to. Get a pigeon to deliver a hard copy maybe? __________________ If your colours are starting to run, let them all run, run away from you. Flux - Bloc Party Design Never Dies A message to newcomers. This is not google. Before you ask us here why not try typing it into google. 60% of the time it works every time. Currently Has: 26 "Keeping it Real" Points, 1 bonus point for being Sexy and a sea urchin.

23-07-2008, 10:22	#16 (permalink)
Pugsley L'me at'em. L'me at'em. Join Date: May 2007 Location: Aberdeen, Scotland Posts: 2,751	oh... didn't know that part. Well if she has that get her to save as smallest file size. If not then i don't have a scooby what to. Get a pigeon to deliver a hard copy maybe? __________________ If your colours are starting to run, let them all run, run away from you. Flux - Bloc Party Design Never Dies A message to newcomers. This is not google. Before you ask us here why not try typing it into google. 60% of the time it works every time. Currently Has: 26 "Keeping it Real" Points, 1 bonus point for being Sexy and a sea urchin.

23-07-2008, 10:25	#17 (permalink)
Do Gooder Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 5,836	ah. yes. no. yes. for the originator of the doc.. save as what you like. but if you don't want to bother with trying to explain this shit... you can just process the doc yourself through acrobat before reading.

24-07-2008, 05:49	#18 (permalink)
tether Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 77	at the moment under System Memory it lists: active: 445.87mb inactive: 224.80mb Full list of stuff there is: wired 90 mb active 445mb inactive 216 mb used 752 mb free 15 mb VM size 6.37 gb pages ins/outs 633576/399062 Though I don't know what that stuff means... When I try and run Tiger cache cleaner, it tells me This application cannot run on this system (1049) Is there a similar other application somebody'd recommend that might do a similar job? Thanks.

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