iMac G4 Running Leopard Slow ... HELP ?

sham09

Hey,

I have an iMac g4 20inch 1.25GHZ with 1.5GB of Ram running OSX Leopard.

I bought this machine second hand last year as I always loved the lampshade design.

This machine is not my daily computer but I like to use it for iTunes & Web browsing (Youtube etc...)

At the moment I am finding that it runs rather slow when watching videos online, such as Youtube ... The video stutters and runs slowly making it unwatchable.

I was wondering is there anything I am doing incorrectly ? I am not using this machine for multi-tasking or for anything high powered just simply web browsing & iTunes.

Would it run smoother if I installed an old OS ? Or is this machine simply not capable of Youtube anymore.. ?

I am grateful for any recommendations Thanks in advance

ZENER

Hi. Lovely machine you've got. I've always admired the design and build of the Lampshade iMac.

In relation to your problem: As a comparison, I have a 17" Powerbook, 1GHz G4 and 2GB RAM and Leopard 10.5.7. Youtube videos work fine on this setup so I'm guessing there are other issues at play with your computer. Perhaps updating the Flash Player or trying a different browser might help ?

Does the machine work ok otherwise ? Is startup swift ? Is your internet connection setup correctly on the Mac ? Is it connected wirelessly or wired ? If the former, have you got a strong signal ? Are you achieving decent download speeds with software updates etc. ?

Ken

sham09 wrote: »

Hey,

I have an iMac g4 20inch 1.25GHZ with 1.5GB of Ram running OSX Leopard.

I bought this machine second hand last year as I always loved the lampshade design.

This machine is not my daily computer but I like to use it for iTunes & Web browsing (Youtube etc...)

At the moment I am finding that it runs rather slow when watching videos online, such as Youtube ... The video stutters and runs slowly making it unwatchable.

I was wondering is there anything I am doing incorrectly ? I am not using this machine for multi-tasking or for anything high powered just simply web browsing & iTunes.

Would it run smoother if I installed an old OS ? Or is this machine simply not capable of Youtube anymore.. ?

I am grateful for any recommendations Thanks in advance

sham09

Hi Zener,

Thanks for your advice.

I have updated to the most recent Adobe Flash and I have tried using both Safari & Firefox browsers for Youtube but the video is still very slow & choppy ...

Yes the machine is OK but runs rather slow for my liking. As I havent used this machine much I havent really had time to look into the problem but now I have some time I'd be interested it getting it resolved.

It is connected to my home network wireless, when I bought the machine it had no Airport installed so I bought a brand new from CompuB. I think it is the Airport Extreme model. I am achieveing good signal strength & I am getting : Down = 3373kbps & Up=384kbps. Download speeds for software updates are fast and normal. I have also updated the software using Software Update on the machine, so its now currently running the most upto date versions of everything.

Do you recommend I format the machine & reinstall OSX?

Sad Professor

Have a look in Activity Monitor and see if there's anything amiss (like an process using too much cpu, ram, etc). You might have a rogue app running amok.

You could also try creating and logging in under a new user account (just as a test) and see if there's any improvement.

sham09

I cannot see any processes that are causing the machine to run this slow ... Attached is a screenshot of my iMac running Safari with Youtube running in the background & the activity monitor.

Thanks for the advice on creating a new user account, I tried that but still the same ...

Is this machine not capable of playing videos at the correct speed anymore ?

Here is the a link to the video I am using in my tests :

Thanks again for all the help

Type 17

Strange, I viewed the same video on a more modern machine (2007 MBP 2.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM) and the CPU usage was about the same as your screen shot, so your machine should be able for it too.

I also maintain various Mac's in my brother's office, and one of them is a 1.25 GHz Power Mac G4 with 2 GB of RAM, and it runs fine on Youtube, as far as I know (the user shouldn't be surfing YouTube, though ). This Mac is still running 10.4.11, though.

However, my dad has an eMac (1 GHz G4 with 1 GB of RAM) running 10.5.x, and it runs YouTube fine.

If you have the right discs, etc, and have all your docs/apps backed up/available, you might consider wiping the hard drive and installing again - I found this very effective with really old iMac G3's (I re-installed 10.3.9 on the oldest ones, and 10.4.11 on the newer ones). IIRC, the newer ones (600 MHz) can run YouTube fine too, so it is unlikely to be a hardware-is-too-old issue.

sham09

Ok thanks for all the replies guys.

I have decided to format the machine & reinstall OSX Leopard. I will give this a go this weekend sometime if I can get hold of a Leopard disc

deevey

Just out of interest, have you tried youtube from a different user account in leopard, just in case ..

Also try clearing your plugin folder (there may be a few extra ones in there) and re-installing flash.

I had a similar issue a while back with flash and all my browsers (Opera / FF / Safari / Camino), use the adobe uninstaller, and then clear the junk manually inc. the preferences for the browsers too.

Its worth a shot.

Langer

leopard isnt great on G4's really(tiger 10.4 would probably be better).
who are you with for broadband, i had BT and Youtube was a dog on it, switched to `smart , much better.
the video ram is small on those imacs too.
might add that i noticed Limewire in your dock, watch out for items in a shared folder, stealing your bandwidth.

Elessar

Youtube was laggy and slow on my MBP 2.16Ghz dual core. I realised that it was the hard drive which was stuttering the videos. I bought an SSD and now they are smooth as silk. How much space have you got left? Could be a HDD on the way out too.