Because of problems with my MacBook, I’m going to start using an older laptop, specifically my G4 Icebook, which has a 900MHz CPU, and is running OSX 10.1 or 10.2.
Will the computer be powerful enough to run Scrivener? Are there any tips you might offer to maximize performance?
Thanks!
Scrivener won’t run on anything less than Tiger.
Best,
Keith
First you will need to run Tiger
To use Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, your Macintosh needs:
A PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
Built-in FireWire
At least 256 MB of RAM
DVD drive (DVD-ROM), Combo (CD-RW/DVD-ROM) or SuperDrive (DVD-R) for installation
At least 3 GB of free disk space; 4 GB if you install the XCode 2 Developer Tools
After installing tiger some things to speed it up a tad are
(1) Change your Font Smoothing point size to 12 (System Preferences/Appearance) and to use Automatic. Then use a point size of 12 or less in SCR. This will not look as pretty but will render much faster.
Also UNCHECK smooth scrolling.
(2) Under DOCK Preferences select Minimize using SCALE EFFECT instead of GENIE EFFECT
(3) Don’t leave CD’s DVD’s in the drive. Leaving them in makes the Drive have to spin up every few seconds taking more battery power and system resources.
(4) Don’t leave a lot of crap on your desktop.
(5) Turn off airport/blue tooth when not in use.
(6) Go to your Dashboard and make sure NO widgets are active or if you have to have some active use as few as possible. They still use resources even when Dashboard is not active. 
(7) Close applications you are not using. This frees up resources and custs down on VM paging.
(8) Have plenty of RAM. More RAM = smoother sailing.
(9) Don’t upgrade to Leopard. On your legacy machine the speed decrease will probably outweigh the benefits of running Leopard.
(10) Make sure all your permissions are repaired after upgrading and your disk is repaired before doing any work.
Most important.
BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP before upgrading to a new OS version
Hope that helps
Great! Thanks - I think I still have the system discs from the G4 iBook I had after the 900 MHz one…
Great! Thanks - I think I still have the system discs from the G4 iBook I had after the 900 MHz one…