Quite Possibly the Dumbest Stupid Newbie Question Ever

[csr]

I'm the one who posted about iPhoto being so dog slow on my G4 800MHz iMac with 512MB of memory.

It would seem that my experience is somewhat unique, based on what I've read elsewhere. Sure, iPhoto is a dog, but it sucks up all but 7MB of RAM when I start it up.

Someone suggested I run hardware diagnostics (just did that, everything was fine) and if it found nothing, possibly do a reinstall of the OS.

When I bought Panther, I just did an upgrade over Jaguar, even though several people were recommending a full wipe and install of Panther. I am wondering if perhaps that's not contributing to my problem. Or perhaps if not having a clean OS install in 18 months is not helping either.

So I have decided to wipe everything and install Panther cleanly. I'm offloading all of my important stuff to my firewire drive as I type this.

My question is this: When I bought Panther, I just put the three CD-ROM's into my leather CD holder where I put all of my software. Before I jump in feet-first, I am concerned about 2 things:

1 - Does Panther truly only come on 3 CDs? (Yes, I am so neurotic that I worry that I lost the 4th, 5th and 6th CDs)

2 - Does Panther require a serial number upon installation or registration? I don't remember, and there are no serial numbers written on the manual and Installation and Setup guide that I have.

3 - If the answer to #2 is yes, is there any way to find said serial number within the OS prior to wiping everything?

I apologize in advance for the ignorance of my questions, but I have never really done much messing with my iMac since I bought it and wiping and reinstalling makes me somewhat nervous.

Thanks!

[ElDiabloConCaca]

To answer your questions, yes, Panther is only 3 CDs. The install will actually only use the first TWO CDs, unless you elect to install the X11 windowing system (you'll be presented with options to install this when you install).

After looking in my Panther box, I see that there are actually 4 CDs, but only 3 of them are the Panther install disks. The 4th CD is the XCode tools, which you won't need unless you plan on using your Mac for programming.

Nope, no serial numbers. No anti-piracy measures whatsoever, making the Panther installation just about the easiest thing you can do to a Mac. No serial number hassles, no online activation, nothing... install and enjoy.

Good luck, and I hope everything goes well for you!

[Jason]

yes, 3 cds, the first is what you absolutely need, the 2nd has some of the apps that are extra, and the 3rd is the same... i believe

no serial code

and get more ram trust me, if you are working with 6mp pictures, get more ram, ram ram ram ram ram ram ram

[cockneygeezer]

You answers:

1 - Does Panther truly only come on 3 CDs? (Yes, I am so neurotic that I worry that I lost the 4th, 5th and 6th CDs)

Yes. MacOS X.3 comes on 3 CD's. There is also a forth disc included in the packs, but this is mainly for developers. It contains the XCode software.


2 - Does Panther require a serial number upon installation or registration? I don't remember, and there are no serial numbers written on the manual and Installation and Setup guide that I have.

Panther requires no serial number and it does not need activation.


3 - If the answer to #2 is yes, is there any way to find said serial number within the OS prior to wiping everything?

N/A

Hope it helps?

Regards,

[csr]

Wow - I posted this, drove into work and had three responses! Thanks!

I am glad to hear it's just that easy. And as always, surprised.

I do plan on getting more RAM but right now I'm working in the "isolate each issue" mode. I isolated the hardware, seems to be fine. Now I'm going to try to isolate the OS load, which will probably speed things up a bit. Then it's on to iPhoto4 (most likely). After that I will buy a 512 SODIMM to put in the "user-accessible" slot to replace my 256MB of RAM. It's $260 to have another 512 installed in the "apple-only accessible" slot at the store (the price includes installation). I'm going to hold off on doing that, though, if I don't have to.

The reason I think that the reinstall might be necessary is that everything seems slower, now that I think about it. Even other Apps besides iPhoto. Other users of the exact same system report that Photoshop 7, CS and Elements are all fast on their machines, but Elements is slow on mine. Plus a few others.

Thanks for the info - I am at work now but when I get home tonight I'm going to wipe & reinstall, with much more confidence than I had before.

[MBHockey]

iPhoto being slow with large amounts of pictures is a known issue, simply because Apple wasn't anticipating digital cameras being so big. So, they have fixed this. If you buy the iLive '04 software suite you will see a dramatic improvement in its new version of iPhoto, among its other updated iApps.

[csr]

MBHockey - I hope that iPhoto4 picks up the speed a bit. The problem with my version of iPhoto though wasn't that it was slow with large amounts of pictures. I am using a library manager and it's gotten so I have fewer than 100 pictures in each iPhoto library, in fact every time I get new photos I create a whole new library for them! (Gotten to be quite messy, in fact.)

That's why I'm so annoyed with iPhoto right now.

[jhawk28]

I can attest that iPhoto 4 has picked up the speed. Opens much faster on my iBook 800 G3 and views the pics faster.

Joshua