How to speed up a PowerMac G4, or is this as fast as it gets?

Just wanted to update you guys. I walked him through repairing permissions and had him reboot right after. He said that the windows open a little faster, but they still are not the "speed that he expected." Not sure if he has unreasonable expectations or not. He stated that he would be interested in upgrading to Panther in a few months. I also gave him a bunch of tips that you guys supplied. I'll be doing the upgrade, and will let you know how it goes. Thanks for the help.
 
If he's worried about opening windows faster, then have him switch his settings in general preferences from Genie to Scale.

So what is he basing his speed expectations on as a standard? Sounds like a very picky client indeed!
 
LABachlr said:
If I were to do an Archive and Preserve when installing Panther (if he opts to upgrade to Panther), would it be like a fresh install, and also preserve Office X?

Does Office X install files into the system or system library folders, which would dictate that it be re-installed.

I think he may have lost the Office X disks, but I'm not sure. He didn't say.
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  1. Yes
  2. Yes Office does install fonts into the /Library/Fonts folder, but not into the /System/Library/Fonts folder. It also installs the applications themselves into the /Applications folder (all these folders are "owned" by System). The rest of the Office Stuff will go into the User's home folder. No they will not be erased or destroyed by an Archive and Preserve.
  3. It would be better if he could find them. There is always the possibility he made need to do a reinstall at some point in the future. I have had to remove and reinstall Office more than once to restore some feature or functionality that got broken. Office is the only product I have ever had to do that with.
 
Natobasso said:
If he's worried about opening windows faster, then have him switch his settings in general preferences from Genie to Scale.

So what is he basing his speed expectations on as a standard? Sounds like a very picky client indeed!
Click to expand...

Will do. Thanks.

Not sure what he is basing it on. I think he thought that since he bought the fastest computer system at the time of the purchase (I guess it was about 1 1/2 years ago, not three; not sure if that was top of the line then or not), that its speed should be blazing. I think he is basing it more on his expectations than he is on any comparisons.

I can't tell if he is picky or not, as I won't be able to tell until I actually see the system perform in person. Even then, I won't really have anything to compare it to, as I have not worked on Macs in a while. I may just go into a store and check them out so I can get an idea of Mac's speeds nowadays. I plan on getting a used Mac soon so I can start fooling around with it.
 
perfessor101 said:
  1. Yes
  2. Yes Office does install fonts into the /Library/Fonts folder, but not into the /System/Library/Fonts folder. It also installs the applications themselves into the /Applications folder (all these folders are "owned" by System). The rest of the Office Stuff will go into the User's home folder. No they will not be erased or destroyed by an Archive and Preserve.
  3. It would be better if he could find them. There is always the possibility he made need to do a reinstall at some point in the future. I have had to remove and reinstall Office more than once to restore some feature or functionality that got broken. Office is the only product I have ever had to do that with.
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OK. Thanks, perfessor. I'll ask him about the disks. Pretty funny that Office X is the only program suite that had to be reinstalled. I have also heard that MS Office performs slower on Mac's then on PC's. Are these coincidences, or is there a hidden agenda... ;)
 
Btw, Natobasso, how do you like your Powerbook Pismo G3? That's one that I am considering getting (PB Pismo G3 500 w/640MB RAM). Would you suggest getting one, or should I aim higher on account of today's needs? Would you be able to tell me specs of a PC system that would be of comparable speed so I can get an idea how fast it is?
 
LABachlr said:
I have also heard that MS Office performs slower on Mac's then on PC's. Are these coincidences, or is there a hidden agenda... ;)
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There is no hidden agenda. The Microsoft Mac Business Unit did rewrite substantial portions of Office to be "more Mac like" and to improve some previously pretty dismal performance issues. But major portions of the code are still a port from Windows and the PC. And some of that PC code is a long way from being up to modern coding standards. That makes reasonable economic sense for Microsoft to do it that way, but Office is not in any way fully optimized for the Macintosh it is just optimized "enough" to be acceptable.

You might like to take a look at this blog from a Microsoft Mac Business Programmer. It is long, but it will give you an idea of what they have to contend with in developing a product on two very different platforms.
 
No-one has mentioned a fundamental house-keeping chore that could speed up the system a bit, running the cron tasks. They are tasks to delete log files and seem to help performance a bit. They should be done daily, weekly and monthly, but they are scheduled to run at 4 am, a time when the computer is usually off or asleep.

Cocktail will let you do them, or you can run them at the terminal.

at the "command prompt" in terminal, type "sudo periodic daily" and enter the password of the admin user when it asks for it.
When the cursor comes back, do the same for "weekly" and then "monthly"
 
perfessor101 said:
There is no hidden agenda. The Microsoft Mac Business Unit did rewrite substantial portions of Office to be "more Mac like" and to improve some previously pretty dismal performance issues. But major portions of the code are still a port from Windows and the PC. And some of that PC code is a long way from being up to modern coding standards. That makes reasonable economic sense for Microsoft to do it that way, but Office is not in any way fully optimized for the Macintosh it is just optimized "enough" to be acceptable.

You might like to take a look at this blog from a Microsoft Mac Business Programmer. It is long, but it will give you an idea of what they have to contend with in developing a product on two very different platforms.
Click to expand...

Is the Microsoft Mac Business Unit made up of both Mac and MS programmers? If not, I would think that would be the wise thing to do to get the programming up to today's standards.

Thanks for the blog link. I'll check it out.
 
pds said:
No-one has mentioned a fundamental house-keeping chore that could speed up the system a bit, running the cron tasks. They are tasks to delete log files and seem to help performance a bit. They should be done daily, weekly and monthly, but they are scheduled to run at 4 am, a time when the computer is usually off or asleep.

Cocktail will let you do them, or you can run them at the terminal.

at the "command prompt" in terminal, type "sudo periodic daily" and enter the password of the admin user when it asks for it.
When the cursor comes back, do the same for "weekly" and then "monthly"
Click to expand...

Cool. Thanks.
 
carefully ;)

_I_ click on the terminal icon in my dock ;)

it is in the utilities folder in the applications folder

take care using it... sometimes a space in the wrong place can toast a whole system
 
pds said:
carefully ;)

_I_ click on the terminal icon in my dock ;)

it is in the utilities folder in the applications folder

take care using it... sometimes a space in the wrong place can toast a whole system
Click to expand...

LOL. OK. Will take care.

Wow, just a space will toast the system. Pretty insane. In Windows, when using the command prompt, if something is mistyped, it just states "bad command" or "not recognized."

I will definitely get acquainted with it before I start using it as a tool. Thanks for the tip.
 
LABachlr said:
Is the Microsoft Mac Business Unit made up of both Mac and MS programmers? If not, I would think that would be the wise thing to do to get the programming up to today's standards.
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The issue is not the programmers themselves it is the tens and hundreds of thousands of lines of legacy code within Office and within Windows itself.
 
perfessor101 said:
The issue is not the programmers themselves it is the tens and hundreds of thousands of lines of legacy code within Office and within Windows itself.
Click to expand...

OK. Makes sense.
 
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