I have a iBook G4 — 1.33 GHz — 512 MB RAM. It’s running really slow. Do you have any “quick fixes”? I was looking on the internet and saw that “anacron” was suggested. Do you guys have any suggestions. I don’t really want to buy a new mac (yet) so any suggestions would be appreciated. thanks.

There’s two areas you can look at when trying to speed up a computer: hardware or software. If your Mac is running Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) or earlier, then something like Anacron or Onyx (my personal favorite) work really well for cleaning up your machine. If your computer is running Mac OS 10.5 or later, then you don’t really need these programs (at least for the reasons that they’re usually recommended).

As noted on the current version of Anacron:

Note: This version of Anacron will run on MacOS 10.5 (Leopard) but it is not needed, as the Leopard launchd will run skipped jobs when the machine is next awake.

On older (pre 10.5 / Leopard) Macs there was a set of utilities designed to keep your Mac running smoothly that would only run at a certain time of day and if your Mac wasn’t awake/turned on at that time, then the utility wouldn’t run until the next time. For some folks, this might never happen if there Mac wasn’t turned on/awake at the right time — which is where Anacron/Onx came in. They would allow you to automatically run the utilities or schedule them for a different time so that your Mac would get, for lack of a better term, cleaned up.

Aside: How to tell what version of Mac OS you have — click the Apple icon in the top left corner of your screen, choose About This Mac (that sounds familiar?). You’ll see a little screen pop up that looks something like this:

That tells me I’m running Mac OS 10.5.6, currently the latest version.

Let’s assume you have Mac OS 10.5.x Leopard on your Mac. Your next step would be to make sure it’s not just one or two programs that seem to run slow, but rather, that everything seems slow. If you can narrow it down to just one program, for example Microsoft Word, then you might want to check for updates to that program that may fix your problem. If that doesn’t seem to be the issue, then you can look at hardware.

Upgrading the memory (or RAM) on your computer is probably the simplest, and in the case of a notebook, almost your only option. The 512MB your iBook has currently is the minimum required amount of memory for Leopard as detailed by Apple. (Tiger, Mac OS 10.4, minimum required RAM was 256MB). Depending on the exact iBook G4 model, you can most likely upgrade your iBook to 1.5GB of RAM by adding a 1GB stick of RAM to your iBook. Prices will vary, but should be around $60-$80 depending on your location. Install prices will vary as well, but should be in the $30-$50 range. More RAM will help a lot with the “smoothness” of your Mac while having multiple programs running and also helps with more system intensive applications (i.e. iMovie, etc).

Any other tips from the AboutThisMac community?