[apsoul]

I was given an iBook G4 as a "going to college" gift, and it died on me about 3 years later. After much 3rd party tech-support I was told that the problem was most likely the processor fried. It sat for a couple years, and then one day i got bored and tried to turn it on, AND IT WORKED!.... for about 6 months then died again. This time i sweet talked the Apple tech support guy into telling me what the error message i received meant. He said that the computer wasn't recognizing the HDD and they would probably just have to disconnect and then reconnect the cable from HDD to MOBO, or i would have to get a new HDD. I tried that, and it didn't work. I searched for a long time to find a super cheap < 40GB HD and i couldn't. by this time HDD were all larger than 100GB and i didn't have that kind of money to throw away if it didn't work. more years go by...

I recently aquired a parts laptop (hp) and just an hour or 2 ago I realized that I had a laptop HDD that may work. AND IT DID! I just installed OS X and I'm up and running

On to my questions. How outdated is OS X 10.3? also would it be worth buying a newer mac os? It has 800Mhz G4 and 640MB ram. It says 128 built in, so i'm assuming the 512 is a replaceable stick?

[Peter.Cort]

well first off you won't be able to run leopard on it but a laptop is a laptop. 10.5 is the newer version or maybe snow leopard is like 10.6 but 10.3 isn't too outdated.

[Jayce]

10.3 isn't too bad. I'm running 10.4 on an iBook G4. I don't have a newer Mac to offer a really fair comparison, but I've seen a Mac with 10.6 in action, and it's kind of obvious there's a bit of eye candy difference, but typically you still have Firefox, Safari, Flash, etc etc.

I think the big push isn't so much that 10.3/10.4 is terribly outdated, but I think it's due to the fact that the iBooks are PPC chips, not Intel, and Intel is definitely the future of Apple computers.

Does that mean I'll buy a new Mac? No. But I'm also aware enough of the hardware the iBook has to realize, it may not be the best computer around to keep as a "main laptop." For me, it's just so I can be on Firefox anywhere in the house. Beyond that, I don't use it for much. In the same shoes is my mom, who has a 299mhz old Toshiba laptop from the stone age, and she uses her laptop in the same manner I use that iBook. Why? Because it still works.

After all, if it's working, why not use it? Just acknowledge the limitations it may have, as it won't be the best computer to run any hardcore applications on.