My 2005 iBook runs faster now than when it was new - here's what changed

I picked up a beat up 2005 iBook G4 from a garage sale last spring for 20 bucks. After I swapped the old hard drive for a cheap SSD and maxed out the RAM to 1.5GB, it went from taking 3 minutes to load Safari to about 20 seconds. The real kicker was finding a patched version of TenFourFox that actually lets it load modern websites without crashing. I also repasted the CPU with some Arctic Silver I had lying around and the temps dropped by 15 degrees. Have any of you tried running Linux on these old PowerPC machines or is the classic Mac OS still better for daily use?

2 comments

2 Comments

ellis.charles11d ago

Started telling me about his, my buddy did this exact thing to an old iMac last year.

the_ryan11d ago

Yeah same here. Changed my mind after trying it. @ellis.charles gets it.