Tiger

[ksmith]

Welp, I threw caution to the winds and installed Tiger on the iMac. Even made the mistake of hitting regular Install instead of Archive and Install. Didn't back up a few things I should have backed up. Yes, campers, I was really asking for it.

Fingers crossed, no issues. I noticed the difference in speed right away. Dashboard is KEWL. The Safari RSS feeds are neat for someone not used to getting them--I read one review of Tiger where someone complained about the layout of the headlines.

Spotlight is a Good Thing, and I want to beam my thanks to whoever thought it up.

Mail looks neater.

Still poking around the new digs, but so far I like what I see.

Comments

[hoosier-red.livejournal.com]

Brave lass!

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Flush with success, I upgraded the iBook, and I'm not sure if things went well or not. After installation, I got the little "Installation Successful!" notice, but when I tried to restart the system, it went through the whirly gear stage for a couple of minutes, then...nothing. Blue screen with mouse arrow, but it was like nothing was happening.

After well over 5 minutes of this, I shut the thing down and restarted. I wound up doing this twice. The second time, I tried to start it while holding down the Option button--I wanted to see whether there was any hard drive damage requiring disk repair, and iirc the Option button is the one to press. Instead, it went ahead and started up--I got to the usual desktop, it asked me a few questions about some keychain items, and accepted the answers. I repaired permissions, and Disk Utility indicated that the disk was verified, so I assume it's ok. But things aren't moving as quickly as they did on the iMac, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this thing may crash.

Now I'm going to wonder whether I should have left the iBook alone. it's possible that this bottom-of-the-line unit of mine doesn't have the oomph needed to run Tiger.

[hoosier-red.livejournal.com]

I don't think it'll crash, but if you only have 256 MB of memory, that's probably making it act poky as all getout. If I remember correctly, iBooks have two memory slots (I had to upgrade my nephew's), and if you can afford another stick of 256MB memory, that should fix your problem.

We're actually having similar problems with the Mac Mini -- Lyndon upgraded it, and said that it should be reacting a lot faster than it is, but it also has 256 MB of memory so we figure it's a memory problem. If you hit somewhere like CompUSA, you might be able to get a decent price on memory (remember to explain that it goes in an iMac); alternately, Fry's website Outpost.com is offering Mushkin memory (which fits in Macs) at $39.95 for a 256MB stick -- details are here (http://shop2.outpost.com/{QnMi4qWmxG12tuTJvZzZ23fqmHWgcdJ25ku4mYIedAzeDDfUYJso|-4703486685007945408/184095267/6/7001/7001/7002/7002/7001/-1|3478291664268050534/184095268/6/7001/7001/7002/7002/7001/-1|1114841826199}/search?search_type=regular&sqxts=1&query_string=Mushkin+memory&cat=&submit.x=0&submit.y=0).

Ah -- and on doublechecking that the iMac does indeed have two expansion slots, it says that the older G3 models (dunno which one you have) can only be upgraded to 384 MB, which means all you need is a 128MB memory stick if you indeed have an older G3. Not as nice as 512MB of memory, but it'll make the beastie run faster with Tiger.

[hoosier-red.livejournal.com]

Oooh, and apparently you CAN boost the bugger to 512 MB if you use a low-profile SO-DIMM (assuming that this will work in your machine). More details are here (http://www.transintl.com/technotes/newg3pb.htm), if you want to check them out.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

The ad mentions iMacs and Powerbooks,but not iBooks...

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

According to the Apple website:

"256MB of PC2100 (266MHz) DDR SDRAM (256MB built-in and one available SO-DIMM slot) with support for up to 1.25GB"

I may even take it beyond 512 if I'm feeling adventurous...

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

Memory is cheap. And right now the difference between 512M and 1G is less than a 50% premium. The only thing that is keeping me from upgrading is the fact that I have three major computer projects in the offing, and there is no point in stockpiling parts til I'm actually doing the work.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Ah -- and on doublechecking that the iMac does indeed have two expansion slots, it says that the older G3 models (dunno which one you have) can only be upgraded to 384 MB, which means all you need is a 128MB memory stick if you indeed have an older G3. Not as nice as 512MB of memory, but it'll make the beastie run faster with Tiger.

My problem's with my G4 iBook.

My G5 iMac has 512 MB memory, but I think it has other turbocharging capabilities that enable it to accommodate larger programs and run so quickly.

My cold boot of the iBook this morning went well, and quickly. My biggest concern is that I interrupted something important when I turned it off in the middle of booting up. Maybe it fixed itself. Or maybe it's saving it up for later...

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

I need to upgrade my Mini. tappu ordered it with only 256MB or RAM, and I would really love half a Gig or more.

Tiger might have to wait until after that, but I'm loving everything I hear about it.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I like Spotlight, which lets you search all your files, emails, etc for terms/words. One of my biggest knocks against the Mac file structure was that you couldn't find things easily.

There are new screensavers and desktops as well. One neat thing in this section is the iTunes group, which makes screensavers of all the album cover artwork for the music you've downloaded.

I will say that by iMac has been running on the loud side since I installed Tiger, but maybe it's just one of those things.