10.2 For First Generation PowerBook G4

G

georgelien

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I bought my PowerBook G4/500 at the end of the February in 2000, so I can have a Mac and a portable let me run Mac OS X. I am finally satisfied with the new OS after the release of 10.1.5, now I have a decision to make:

1) To stay with 10.1.5.

Or

2) To move to 10.2.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Please let me know if you are a owner of the first generation PowerBook G4.

The following is the spec for my PowerBook:

500MHz PowerPC 7410 (G4)
1 MB Backside Cache
100 MHz System Bus
256 MB PC100 SDRAM
8MB Video RAM
20GB Ultra ATA/66 Hard Drive

!!! Mac Rules !!!
!!! HAVE FUN !!!
 
No question about it mate. Move to 10.2. I'm running 10.2 on the 400Mhz TiBook, and it works beautifully. Go for it now. Your system will run even better than before, and with the new Energy Saving preferences, you can get a lot more out of your battery now too.:D
 
God yeah of course ya can. Its got everything 10.1 has except less bugs, and more speed, and loads more features ! hehe

But with 10.2, the chance you'll need/want to run classic is even lower. Plus, just incase you do need to run it, Classic now boots in about half the time it did in 10.1:D
 
Well, I have a G4/500 Powerbook and I just installed OS 10.2 on it. I had a minor problem during install. The system restarted itself and then installed again. I think it's because the CD didn't go into the slot-loader correctly the first time. So far, 10.2 is nice. Windows open like they did in OS 9 (zoom open) and I've already been using spring-loaded folders. The finder works a lot better. Junk mail in the mail program picks up stuff pretty well. I haven't figured out how to change the highlighting color in Mail.app yet though. I have it set to a certain color system-wide, but in Mail.app it defaults to an ugly brown which I can't seem to change. Anybody notice that? It does let me enable other messages from the same thread to appear in any color I choose...

All in all, I think it is a worthy upgrade. I don't think quartz extreme does anything on this model powerbook, but stuff runs a little faster anyway. Startup is faster.

Matthew
 
I just installed 10.2 on my PowerBook
(first generation, 500Mhz) and I'm enjoying it. I have purple highlighting in mail and when I change the color in system preferences it changes in mail, too. I suggest that you get 10.2.

-JARinteractive
 
Originally posted by jarinteractive
I just installed 10.2 on my PowerBook
(first generation, 500Mhz) and I'm enjoying it. I have purple highlighting in mail and when I change the color in system preferences it changes in mail, too. I suggest that you get 10.2.

-JARinteractive
Click to expand...

Actually, it was working fine BEFORE I installed 10.2 - it's now that it turned brown and won't change to anything else.

[ADDENDUM!!!]
I tried quitting mail after a reboot and changing the settings in the general system preferences to green. Now mail is highlighting in green. HOWEVER, it is a much darker green than anything else that I highlight elsewhere on the system. Odd, huh?
 
upgrade for sure, but first do this:
PARTITION that 20GIG drive!

make a 15GIG and 5GIG

intsall old trusty OS9 on the 5 and 10.2 on the 15

that's what i've done on my Ti500 and i can always boot in 9 if i need to, which comes in handy more often than one would think. as a matter o' fact, i just had to boot in 9 an hour ago to uninstall DAVE from my OSX partition. the Jag upgrade didn't like it.

have fun :)
 
I run a TiBook 400 with 768MB RAM and it I'm very happy with performance of JagWire. Definitely upgrade, but I suggest you also upgrade your RAM too. OS X really shines with more RAM.

With regard to the brown color of some mail, that is due to Mail.app thinking that it is spam. You can change the colour in the Rules preferences if you feel you really must, but it is a useful feature.

If a particular message is not spam, just click the toolbar button to tell Mail.app that it is not (When you select a message, the toolbar icon will toggle between "Spam" and "Not Spam" depending on how Mail has aldready set that message - the button gives you the *other* choice).

Hope this helps
PowerBark

PS I agree that having separate OS partitions is a good idea, if you can easily do it.
 
definitely get Jaguar, its worth it!

and if you partition, you don't need 5 gigs for classic, only like 1-2, and put any large classic apps on your other partition.
 
Thanks for everyone's reply. However, experience tells me not to become an early adapter when it comes to computing stuff--less you're only experimenting. You might then wonder why I got the first generation PowerBook if I practice what I say. Well, I got the PowerBook because I've waited two years for a G4-to-go. Besides, I stuck with PowerPC 604 chips and skipped the G3s until I got my PowerBook G4.

Anyway, 10.1.5 works fine for me now, so I don't plan to move to 10.2 until I get myself a new PowerBook in another year and a half--when my 3-year AppleCare expires--2GHz PowerBook, 1GB of DDR RAM, 64MB Video RAM, 60GB HD, Super Drive.

Please keep me posted though with the good and the bad from your newly installed PowerBooks.

Thank you all very much, again!

Regards,
George Lien
 
I've been having the darker-than-expected system highlight color as well.

In addition, I've had this happen a few times where my battery reading says 100..90..80..70..60..50..45% and then suddenly drops to zero and the machine goes to sleep. This is a new 10.2 issue. Has anyone else had this happen?

I completely repartitioned my drive before I installed. Also, I've had the same highlight color issue on my G4 450 MHz AGP.

PBG4 Rev A 500MHz 768 MB
 
> Power Management Problems 10.2

I have not experienced problems during continuous use (indeed, the battery lasts longer than under 10.15). However, the sleep issue is not fixed and the battery runs down fast when my PowerBook is asleep.

There was also an issue when waking from sleep that I would get the low battery warning message if the display was set to time. Once I changed this to percentage, that was resolved (it would seem that the time display needs to be calculated from a few minutes use to become of any real meaning).

BTW does anyone know of a battery reconditioning program for OS X? There used to be an OS 9 Utility that would reset the battery memory if it had become corrupted.
 
I like 10.2 on my PowerBook G4 500. Runs nice and smooth. This is OS X, but nice and polished.

hehe... the only reason I keep classic around is so I can run SimCity 2000 :D
 
Successfully updated a G4/500 Ti at work to 10.2 from 10.1.5.

No noticable problems at this point with only a reboot needing to get Timbuktu 6.0.2 working again (rebooting reloaded the Startup Item, I guess).

I'm actually amazed at how smooth the upgrade went given how much data and setting needed to be preserved; I was expecting to see stuff like SSH settings lost, etc. but no such thing.

Highlight colors in Mail are definitely darker than the rest of the system; oh well, one more thing to get fixed, I guess.

One other issue I noticed is that Windows networking works like a charm except for sharing files with multi-byte characters... grrr.

Cheers.

Originally posted by jc658
I've been having the darker-than-expected system highlight color as well.
Click to expand...
 
Thank you eveybody for sharing. I have learned a whole lot, and am sure so have many others.

Please keep new information coming!

Thanks again!

Regards,
George Lien
 
... just thought I'd throw in my 2¢ ....

I waited until we reached 10.2.2 before upgrading to Jag (from 10.1.5) for similar reasons to George (amongst other waiting for all the Unix utils I use to be ported ...) ... and I was *very* pleasantly surprised at how easy the upgrade was! Apple has done a really great job with 10.2 and it was worth every penny!! (sorry, cent nowadays). I was relieved to find Python (as well as Ruby) pre-installed - saved me updating that :) also it was nice to find that a lot of other Unix apps were pre-installed (like Bash ... although it took a bit of fixing, coz my settings were still pointing to the old bash ...)

All in all a smashing job! :)

C

PS: I have that low battery warning from sleep problem too - and I had mine set to display percentage ... hrm - I'll have to try switching to time and back; see what happens. :)
 
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