problems from a recent convert

[lahlah]

okay, so i've inherited this 17" powerbook g4 1.5ghz, 1gb RAM, 128mb vram mobile radeon 9700. so, fun and all, seeing as though i've been drooling over these things for a while now anyway, when i got it, it was used (i work at a graphic design housee) and the quality of care that the previous owner administrated to the poor thing is questionable at best.

so, like any young mac'er, i loaded up a few games, adobe cs, and maya ple. the system's a little laggier than i expected, even in idle browsing. halo plays soso on medium settings, which i find a tad odd. sims 2 is unplayable. so... i guess i'm a bit confused here. i've known these things to be *highly* competent machines, but these experiences are leading me to believe otherwise.

all the software is updated, newest video drivers, and i'm running osx 10.3.9.

can ya help out a soul in need?

thanks

 

[simie]

Try fixing permissions or running the FSK command

Details here

 

[simie]

Whoops! spelling mistake. it should read, fsck -f command

 

[HiRez]

I've seen Halo play sluggishly on a dual G5 with Radeon 9800, with settings not all cranked up, so I would forget about that. Macs in general aren't great gaming machines, and the PowerBooks even less so than the PowerMacs. I know that's not the answer you want, but it's the truth. Try Call of Duty or another Quake III era game instead , those should run well. Maya...meh...it's a laptop. It should be usable but don't expect a miracle for 3D modeling and rendering (I use Cinema 4D on my PowerBook, but when I need to get some real work done, I head for the dual G5). I'd also turn off File Vault if it's on and you don't need it, that can slow down disk access. Also OS X uses virtual memory extensively (even if you have a ton of RAM), so I'd always leave a minimum of 3-4 GB free on your drive for it to use as swap space. One thing that helped perk up my PowerBook was putting a 7200 rpm drive in it (Hitachi 7K60).

 

[Abstract]

Did you do an archive and install, or even a fresh install? I'd do that, since the machine isn't new. Who knows how the last user treated the machine, seeing as how you're questioning the treatment already.

Anyway, it shouldn't be a laggy machine. I have a 12" PB 1GHz with 1.25 GHz of RAM, and when doing basic things, it doesn't lag. In fact, it doesn't lag much at all, which is great! Your machine is much faster than mine and may have a faster HD in there as well, and this is why I suggest doing a fresh install.

But sure, fix permissions if that makes you happy.

Also:

Update Prebindings: sudo update_prebinding -root / -force

Maintenance checks: sudo periodic daily monthly weekly