On Saturday, June 7, 2003, at 08:26 PM, Kevin wrote:
I just bought a PowerBook 520c. It is running OS 8.0 and has 16 Mb of
RAM. It also has RAM doubler 2 installed. I just installed IE 5.1 to use
with my DSL.
I did a little web surfing and found it to be painfully slow. I even
turned off all of the web content graphics. Still slow.
What can I do to speed this thing up without throwing a lot of money in
to it? I would like to use it for occasional web surfing and e-mail. Also
for working with Office 98.
Without throwing a lot of money at it?
Buy a newer powerbook, and glue the 520 badge on it ;-P Technically, you're not throwing money *at* the 520c, just around it...
Maxing out ram is the best thing to do. Ram doubler is not a solution, it is a band-aid.
The second thing to do is realize it is NOT a high-end powerbook by any means....if you really want to run Office 98, IE 5.1, and such at an acceptable speed, the truly best idea will be to follow my first advice, and buy a newer, more capable Powerbook. Lower end Wallstreets are going for < $400 now, and 3400's and 1400's are readily available for <$200.
Office 98 will be a pig on it, upgraded or not.
You'll want to use low-resource software like iCab, Nisus Writer and such on it.
I have a treasured old Claris Business Software CD with Claris Write, Resolve, Filemaker, Draw and Appleworks 2 on it.
This is ideal software for that machine (or any old Powerbook). Claris Write and Resolve are functional and snappy on my 540c. If I needed to do presentations, I have More, which is available online for free, and runs like a charm.
I use Netscape 4.08 on it, and it's passable, but sluggish.
iCab is faster, but it seems like every time I try to use it the damn beta's expired again, and I have to download it again. It's annoying.
Older versions of Eudora, or Claris Mail are good POP mail programs for it; I have an imap mail server and swear by MailDrop. It's purely text, but it's fast and responsive, nearly as much as using Pine on the server.
I have an un-upgraded 540c, with maxed out ram, connected to 10 mbit ethernet at work, and it's slow for web surfing.
I also have a 5300c which is faster than even the PPC upgraded 500 and it's still slow.
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