Slow web surf on PB 12" - will a new hard drive help?

[California]

I want my 12" powerbook 1.5ghz to run faster. It's maxed out at 1.25gbs of ram and has a 60 gig 5400rpm Toshiba 16mb cache hard drive.

How much faster will the Travelstar 100gb 7200rpm with only 8mb cache be while surfing the web? I am frustrated that this little machine is sort of slow, and definitely slower opening web pages than the 1.42ghz 14" iBook.

In other words, what's the difference in real world time on the 16mb cache to the 8mb cache on opening web pages?

I could put in a 80gig 5400 toshiba 16mb too, but want to hear from anyone with the Travelstar. It bothers me that the powerbook is slow at times.

 

[Eidorian]

Delete your cache for Safari. That is if you're using Safari. If you're using FireFox try out Camino instead.

http://www.caminobrowser.org/

That or try Safari Speed.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/24331

 

[California]

Delete your cache for Safari. That is if you're using Safari. If you're using FireFox try out Camino instead.

http://www.caminobrowser.org/

That or try Safari Speed.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/24331

Interesting, I delete the cache on Safari, like, every two minutes while surfing. Thx for the S Speed tip, will try. FFOX and Camino didn't seem that great to me.

 

[mac000]

Do this - it actually helps, i got it from macfixit.com. anyways, In the Network settings under System prefrences go to "Configure IPv6" make sure its configured to "off" next type in the address for the DNS Servers... mine is the same as in "Router" ...


hope this helps, it helped me.

 

[After G]

Try playing around with some router settings.

My web browsing was slow until I limited my housemate's uploading ... apparently as long as everything works fine for him, it doesn't matter that everyone else's connection sucks.

Back on topic, imo 7200 rpm isn't that much faster than 5400. The bottleneck won't be the speed of your HD.

 

[powerbook911]

Download one of the nightly Webkit builds:

http://nightly.webkit.org/builds/

They are faster than the standard Safari release.

On G4s, web browsing is a bit slower on Macs. Unfortunately.

 

[jimmie]

changing to the harddrive will most likely not give satisfactory perfomance gain..

 

[California]

changing to the harddrive will most likely not give satisfactory perfomance gain..

I'm already a bit faster with Safari enhancer - couldn't down load SafariSpeed and haven't tried webkit yet. Thanks for the tips. And what is the new "debug" thing on my menu bar? Anyone know?

Oh well, I'm upgrading hd and dropping in latest revision superdrive -- will let y'all know if any speedbumps. Am particularly curious about the 16mb to 8mb change. If it is noticeable, will switch to a 100gb 5400 16mb drive instead.

 

[hvfsl]

After trying just about every browser on the Mac, I have come to the conclusion that the G4 optimised builds of Camino are the fastest.

http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/

Camino has limited adblocking support built in, but you also might want to download CamiTools (which has similar features to adblock in Firefox)
http://www.nadamac.de/camitools/index.php