Apple ibook G4: a good buy in the age of macbooks

Apple ibook G4

I picked up a used ibook G4 (1.33 ghz 12" screen) off ebay recently (9/08) for $272 total. What a great buy! Unlike a lot of other computers, laptops can generally be shipped cheaply. In fact, shipping on this machine was only $10. Somehow, this machine slipped under the radar as others like it were going for $400 and $500 on ebay. Just shows to go you, if you are patient, you can still find a good deal on ebay.

Once I received the ibook, I maxed out the ram to 1.5 gigs. I did this for about $40 and installing ram is pretty simple on an ibook. I have a new, higher capacity hard drive waiting to go in but that looks like a fairly in-depth project. I think I'll put that off for just a little while.

Apple ibook G4

I have the ibook in extended desktop mode using Screen Spanning Doctor. Using a full size 19" LCD display while at the home office makes the ibook a lot more user friendly in terms of getting things done. The 12" display is nice for use while in transit but not for any real work. While in extended desktop mode, I only have activity monitor running on the ibook's display. On my 19" LCD, my web browser, email and other applications reside. With its 32 megs of vram, the ibook drives the 19" LCD at a resolution of 1280 x 1024 which is not great but not bad either. I picked up a mini-VGA to VGA adapter to hook up the external monitor.

I'm currently running Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) on the ibook (the ibook came with DVD rom) and it runs that operating system with no problems. With 1.5 gigs of ram and 1.33 ghz of cpu, I should be able to run Leopard decently as well. I'm in no hurry to try, however. 10.4 is doing just fine.

If you are very handy with computers and want to save some money, consider picking up an ibook with a bad hard drive or bad optical drive for a lark on ebay. You can pick up a new hard drive for about $50, install it and have a nice machine for perhaps a $150 total investment - not bad considering a new macbook will run you a cool grand, at least. Beware however as this does not appear to be a simple task.

Apple ibook G4

The advantages of the ibook include nearly silent operation (no whirring fan noise to deal with - for the most part); compact form (I opted for the 12" version); portability; minimal desktop invasion; and the price on ebay was hard to beat. I've been keeping an eye on memory usage since upgrading to 1.5 gigs. Under OS 10.4, it is not uncommon for me to use up all free memory with a half dozen or so applications open. This doesn't bode too well for running Leopard but real world results may differ.

I currently have 14 applications open on my iMac G5, and merely have 80 megs of memory free (out of 2.5 gigs). So perhaps OS 10.4 just sucks up all free memory and puts it to use. I do notice, however, that I have 1.18 gigs of inactive memory as well. I'm not sure how to interpret these figures just yet. I can say that with memory prices so cheap, you might as well max out your ram. With maximum ram in the ibook G4, you should notice less accessing of the hard drive as well and quicker response from applications in general.

I should get a few years of use out of the ol' ibook g4 and it was a definite step up from my Blue and White G3 that was running a Daystar G4 600 mhz CPU upgrade. I'll keep posting with further thoughts on the ibook G4 with more use.