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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Upgrading my imac g3 powerpc

angierenee - Feb 21, 2006 - 12:26 am

My tech level is basic

I have an imac g3 power pc 400mhz 256 mb and 20gb....it's running mac os x and i use it primaraly for design programs( InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc...).

I have two questions...

1) The computer itself is getting slow and sluggish. How do I upgrade without buying a whold new mac and what exactly makes it slow?

2) Can my computer support and upgrade to panther or tiger? And if so, can i jump straight to tiger or do i have to upgrade to panther then tiger?

Thank you.

Angie Johnson

LovesMacs - Feb 21, 2006 - 2:47 am

HI Angie,

First, thanks for choosing Macosx.com for your tech support needs. My name is Carolyn and I will try to assist you.

Ok..I checked the Apple site and here are the minimum system requirements for Tiger which is 10.4.x.
Mac OS X Version 10.4 requires a Macintosh with:

PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
Built-in FireWire
At least 256MB of physical RAM
A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
At least 3.0 GB of available space on your hard drive; 4GB of disk space if you install XCode 2 developer tools
DVD drive for installation

As for your questions... 1) Mac slowing down. How much free hard drive space do you have available? Since your drive is 20GB, anything less then 5GB is going to slow down the entire system. The more free space you have available, the faster your system can run.
Also, Photoshop is a memory hog. You have 25mb of RAM, and that is the very least you can run with Tiger 10.4.x. Add PHotoshop or Illustrator or InDesign to that and your Mac will be sluggish. Everytime you add content to a digital image, it takes more memory. The more memory a file takes, as you Save as you work, the slower the cpu runs. A cpu 400mhz could hardly keep up with Tiger running Photoshop etc. And I checked also, Panther 10.3.x has approxinately the same system requirements as Tiger. One way to lcate this information is to go to Goole, type in: Panther minimum system requirements in the Search field and hit Send.

I wish I had better news for you. I know how important graphic design can be. Graphics can generate huge files. One suggestion to you ... get a back up drive to save your projects to. Just keep the project you are working on... on the main drive. That at least is an option.

Regards,
Carolyn :-)