Panther & Memory

[gkar at mac]

Our Panther party has finally wound down. The local community college has an
active Linux community, many of whom are coming big Mac OS X fans. When OS X
was first released we staged an installation party on the Saturday after
Apple released it and we've continued the tradition with Jag and Panther.
What a day! We did nearly 50 installs, a boatload of memory upgrades, and a
few hard drive upgrades.

Here's a few things we've learned. Archive and install is a very very good
idea. We purposely did a straight upgrade on a couple machines and two came
up okay after we fiddled, at least for now, but one was a complete failure.
None of our archive installs failed. Maybe it would have helped the upgrade
if we'd removed the login items first.

Before you do the archive and install, repair permissions and run Disk First
Aid. Since the installer does a disk check that might seem silly but if
nothing else, it will make the upgrade process faster seem if a problem does
exist. Also, go to your login setup and turn off all your login items. After
a few installs, we also decided to manually remove all 3rd party pref-panes.
Do you have to? Probably not but it's better to add these back in one at a
time. If you aren't scrupulous about keeping up to date, it is also a good
time to remind yourself of all the stuff you've added and check for updates.

Finally to the memory the subject refers to. I have a lab full of computers
with 256mb and Jaguar installed. We regularly have Photoshop and GoLive and
BBEdit Lite running without issue. That isn't going to happen with Panther,
I think. 256mb is the absolute minimum.

A few people at the party had older machines with 192 and after the Panther
upgrade they began complaining about unresponsive machines - as in
applications stalling after they were launched. A quick look at the activity
monitor revealed minimal free memory and massive pageouts. We pared down
their login items and that fixed the problem so long as they only launched
two or three applications. That includes login items. Those with 256mb are
in a little better shape but not much.

If your computer has 256 or less and you install Panther, I recommend that
you launch the activity monitor and keep an eye on it as you launch your
applications. If your computer becomes unresponsive and/or you hear the
drive grinding away quit some programs. But my best advice is to upgrade
your memory. How much? Regardless of what your machine has built in, get a
512mb stick. It is the best value at the moment.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

gkar at mac.com