I posted a question regarding my wife's work iBook yesterday under
"Approximate age of an iBook?". A couple helpful folks suggested
"ShadowKiller" as a possible way of speeding up this machine's
performance. I'm wondering what other non-hardware techniques might be
applicable to the laptop (since we don't own the machine, I don't want
to spend $$$ on more ram, etc. Machine now has 384 meg). Again, I know
little about Macs, but I'm sure many of the things I am familiar with on
pc's for enhancing speed such as limiting crap running in the background
via msconfig & services.msc must have analogues in OS X. Perhaps there
are others as well. I see on some web sites they suggest "don't run
Classic", but I'm not sure what this is. Suggestions/referrals to good
beginner sites appreciated ;-)

Dan

In article <3MmdnTWG_fPflsTZRVn-sw@comcast.com>, Dan <none********.com>
wrote:

> I posted a question regarding my wife's work iBook yesterday under
> "Approximate age of an iBook?". A couple helpful folks suggested
> "ShadowKiller" as a possible way of speeding up this machine's
> performance. I'm wondering what other non-hardware techniques might be
> applicable to the laptop (since we don't own the machine, I don't want
> to spend $$$ on more ram, etc. Machine now has 384 meg). Again, I know
> little about Macs, but I'm sure many of the things I am familiar with on
> pc's for enhancing speed such as limiting crap running in the background
> via msconfig & services.msc must have analogues in OS X. Perhaps there
> are others as well. I see on some web sites they suggest "don't run
> Classic", but I'm not sure what this is. Suggestions/referrals to good
> beginner sites appreciated ;-)

Classic is the Mac OS 9 emulator that allows applications that were
written for OS 9 to run under OS 10. You have the option of starting
Classic when you boot the computer. Look for the Classic panel in
System Preferences application and uncheck the "Start Classic when you
login" box. If you aren't running any Classic applications, there is no
need for the emulator to be sitting there in memory.

You can still start a Classic application if the Classic emulator is
not running. The system will start the emulator when you start the
first OS 9 application, and you will have to wait through the
equivalent of the "boot up" process before the application can run. The
Classic environment will continue to run when the OS 9 application
terminates. You can kill it with the "Force Quit" menu or through the
System Preferences panel.

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In article <3MmdnTWG_fPflsTZRVn-sw@comcast.com>, Dan <none********.com>
wrote:

> I posted a question regarding my wife's work iBook yesterday under
> "Approximate age of an iBook?". A couple helpful folks suggested
> "ShadowKiller" as a possible way of speeding up this machine's
> performance. I'm wondering what other non-hardware techniques might be
> applicable to the laptop (since we don't own the machine, I don't want
> to spend $$$ on more ram, etc. Machine now has 384 meg). Again, I know
> little about Macs, but I'm sure many of the things I am familiar with on
> pc's for enhancing speed such as limiting crap running in the background
> via msconfig & services.msc must have analogues in OS X. Perhaps there
> are others as well. I see on some web sites they suggest "don't run
> Classic", but I'm not sure what this is. Suggestions/referrals to good
> beginner sites appreciated ;-)

Classic is the Mac OS 9 emulator that allows applications that were
written for OS 9 to run under OS 10. You have the option of starting
Classic when you boot the computer. Look for the Classic panel in
System Preferences application and uncheck the "Start Classic when you
login" box. If you aren't running any Classic applications, there is no
need for the emulator to be sitting there in memory.

You can still start a Classic application if the Classic emulator is
not running. The system will start the emulator when you start the
first OS 9 application, and you will have to wait through the
equivalent of the "boot up" process before the application can run. The
Classic environment will continue to run when the OS 9 application
terminates. You can kill it with the "Force Quit" menu or through the
System Preferences panel.

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Jim Gibson wrote:
Classic is the Mac OS 9 emulator that allows applications that were
> written for OS 9 to run under OS 10...

Thanks Jim. Don't know if she has any older apps or not, but judging
from how cheap her employer is, I wouldn't doubt it ;-)

Dan

Jim Gibson wrote:
Classic is the Mac OS 9 emulator that allows applications that were
> written for OS 9 to run under OS 10...

Thanks Jim. Don't know if she has any older apps or not, but judging
from how cheap her employer is, I wouldn't doubt it ;-)

Dan

In article <R4SdnbOMR72NGcfZRVn-pA@comcast.com>, Dan <none********.com>
wrote:

> Jim Gibson wrote:
> Classic is the Mac OS 9 emulator that allows applications that were
> > written for OS 9 to run under OS 10...
>
> Thanks Jim. Don't know if she has any older apps or not, but judging
> from how cheap her employer is, I wouldn't doubt it ;-)

You will also find two appllications folders. The one called
Applications is the default for OSX applications, although applications
may be installed just about anywhere. The folder called "Applications
(Mac OS 9)" is where the OS 9 applications are put when you install OSX
on a formerly OS 9 computer.

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In article <R4SdnbOMR72NGcfZRVn-pA@comcast.com>, Dan <none********.com>
wrote:

> Jim Gibson wrote:
> Classic is the Mac OS 9 emulator that allows applications that were
> > written for OS 9 to run under OS 10...
>
> Thanks Jim. Don't know if she has any older apps or not, but judging
> from how cheap her employer is, I wouldn't doubt it ;-)

You will also find two appllications folders. The one called
Applications is the default for OSX applications, although applications
may be installed just about anywhere. The folder called "Applications
(Mac OS 9)" is where the OS 9 applications are put when you install OSX
on a formerly OS 9 computer.

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In article <3MmdnTWG_fPflsTZRVn-sw@comcast.com>, Dan <none********.com>
wrote:

> I'm wondering what other non-hardware techniques might be
> applicable to the laptop (since we don't own the machine, I don't want
> to spend $$$ on more ram, etc.

I have a 2001 iBook with a 500mhz G3 so I have been down this road and
my advice is "abandon all hope ye who enter". Precious little can be
done. The only thing that ever helped significantly was using a 7200rpm
FW drive as the boot drive, that did a lot and I would recommend it to
any lurkers who are using there own machines. As to your problem, I
would make these recommendations with the caveat that they don't help
much:

- hide background apps often. On old machines this makes a noticeable
improvement. I use SpiritedAway to automatically hide background apps
after a specified number of seconds and it makes a noticeable difference.
- Quit apps when unused. You are in a low RAM situation. I understand
how VM works, I also know that quitting unused apps helps anyway.
- Resign yourself to only doing one thing at a time.
- Avoid espn.com
- Use a web browser with tabs because multiple tabs are faster than
multiple windows. In general try to avoid using too many windows. Each
window uses up around a meg of RAM.
- Try using renice to change the CPU priorities assigned to apps. You go
into Terminal and type 'top'. This will show you how much of the cpu
each app is using and the apps proccess ID number. If the ID number of
the app you need to go faster is 947, quit top by typing command-. and
then type:
sudo renice -20 947

You will then be asked for your password. Your password will be
remembered for several minutes in case you want to do this again. The
range of priorities is -20 through 20. Negative numbers make you go
faster, because they are less nice. Sometimes you have to give the
needed app a -20 and the other apps a +20 to get a noticeable
improvement. Even if you only have one app running giving it a -20 will
still help.

Reducing the color range doesn't help. Using shadow killer helps the
GUI, but not the speed at which apps process.

In article <3MmdnTWG_fPflsTZRVn-sw@comcast.com>, Dan <none********.com>
wrote:

> I'm wondering what other non-hardware techniques might be
> applicable to the laptop (since we don't own the machine, I don't want
> to spend $$$ on more ram, etc.

I have a 2001 iBook with a 500mhz G3 so I have been down this road and
my advice is "abandon all hope ye who enter". Precious little can be
done. The only thing that ever helped significantly was using a 7200rpm
FW drive as the boot drive, that did a lot and I would recommend it to
any lurkers who are using there own machines. As to your problem, I
would make these recommendations with the caveat that they don't help
much:

- hide background apps often. On old machines this makes a noticeable
improvement. I use SpiritedAway to automatically hide background apps
after a specified number of seconds and it makes a noticeable difference.
- Quit apps when unused. You are in a low RAM situation. I understand
how VM works, I also know that quitting unused apps helps anyway.
- Resign yourself to only doing one thing at a time.
- Avoid espn.com
- Use a web browser with tabs because multiple tabs are faster than
multiple windows. In general try to avoid using too many windows. Each
window uses up around a meg of RAM.
- Try using renice to change the CPU priorities assigned to apps. You go
into Terminal and type 'top'. This will show you how much of the cpu
each app is using and the apps proccess ID number. If the ID number of
the app you need to go faster is 947, quit top by typing command-. and
then type:
sudo renice -20 947

You will then be asked for your password. Your password will be
remembered for several minutes in case you want to do this again. The
range of priorities is -20 through 20. Negative numbers make you go
faster, because they are less nice. Sometimes you have to give the
needed app a -20 and the other apps a +20 to get a noticeable
improvement. Even if you only have one app running giving it a -20 will
still help.

Reducing the color range doesn't help. Using shadow killer helps the
GUI, but not the speed at which apps process.