[Ti] Problems with videos

[Bob Fowles]

If RAM availability is a problem, then Dashboard 
can be ignored and removed from the doc and never 
used.

In general if the machine is running slow, use 
Activity Monitor or top under Terminal to see if 
any apps are using too much CPU.

Going to 10.4 was a nightmare for a while because 
of the new searching mechanism Spotlight until 
Apple fixed it in a later update. The problem was 
that when you backed up to an external drive 
Spotlight would begin indexing the backup volume 
and the backup would take forever. A 
circumvention was to use the command mdutil under 
Terminal to prevent indexing on the backup 
volume. An alternate way was to drag the external 
HD icon to the Spotlight privacy tab but once the 
backup was done and the volume was detached, the 
volumes were removed from the privacy tab and you 
had to remember to do that again for the next 
backup. Apple fixed that in some later release of 
10.4.

My next problem in 10.4 happened after I 
installed 10.4.10. MS Word started using 50% of 
the CPU which created enough heat to turn on the 
fans. No other Office app has that problem. Even 
though I've followed all the forums, I don't have 
a solution to this problem. I used to have Word 
always started as an active app but I now use it 
and quit it as soon as possible. The underside 
has gotten so hot, it has partially melted the 
right rear rubber foot. If it weren't such a pain 
I would do a clean install of 10.4 and upgrade to 
10.4.9 but not further. I keep hoping for a 
10.4.11 that solves this problem.

Bob

500Mhz G4 PB 768MB


At 10:40 AM +0000 9/10/07, Francis wrote:
>As far as I know, there's no way to upgrade video ram on the
>powerbook. As for 10.4, I tried it for a few weeks last year and saw
>no performance gains, quite the opposite. Dashboard eats up a lot of
>RAM resources! So I downgraded back to 10.3.9 wich feels snapier.
>
>Francis
>
>On 9/10/07, Eduardo Luís <eluis.linux at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  Ok, I will try it, Thanks.
>>  I think there is no way to increase video ram.. is it??
>>
>>  If I install 10.4 will it be more slow then this 10.3?
>>
>>  Thanks.
>>
>>
>>  2007/9/10, Francis <francisz at gmail.com>:
>>  > Hi,
>>  >
>>  > I also own a 400Mhz Mercury with 384MB of RAM and, indeed, the video
>>  > performance is weak. Anything Flash based, like YouTube videos, slows
>>  > down the machine heavily. But if you switch the color depth from
>>  > Millions to Thousands you will be able to get a better performance out
>>  > of the video system. Try it, you'll be able to watch youtube videos
>>  > this way.
>>  >
>>  > Francis
>>  >
>>  > On 9/10/07, Eduardo Luís <eluis.linux at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  > > Hi,
>>  > >
>>  > > I have a Powerbook G4 Titanium mercury (
>>  > > http://www.macrecycling.com/pbtitanium.php ).
>>  > > I installed MacOS X 10.3 but, it seems very slow when switching
>>  > > programs and closing windows.
>>  > > I even can't see any Youtube videos.
>>  > >
>  > > > Is it because of the videoram? Thanks.