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Justin Kenward

Q: Can the processor and ram be upgraded for an affordable price?

Okay, so I've had my PowerBook 15inch for about 6 or 7 years now. I love it. I have a number of reasons for wanting to keep it. Like ports that fit hard drives that newer MacBook Pro's don't seem to have. I'm a photographer and use it for a lot of digital imagery. How ever, it uses the PowerPC processor and I'm finding that a lot of websites won't let me use it without a intel based Mac. I'm having issues trying to download some PDF's. I'm told this is because I'm not using an intel based Mac. Finally, newer software is starting to require that I have an intel based Mac.

I'm on the move all the time and never at home. Much of my entertainment comes from Netflix and video games such as World of Warcraft. I can't stream video from Netflix and soon I won't be able to play video games on my PowerPC based Mac. I was laid off and I've got little money. I DO NOT want a PC, but can't afford a Mac at this time. I was wondering if the processor could be upgraded as well as the ram for an affordable price.

15 inch PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Old... XD

Posted on Oct 3, 2010 4:13 PM

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Q: Can the processor and ram be upgraded for an affordable price?

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  • by Niel,

    Niel Niel Oct 3, 2010 4:18 PM in response to Justin Kenward
    Level 10 (314,083 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 3, 2010 4:18 PM in response to Justin Kenward
    I was wondering if the processor could be upgraded


    It's not upgradable at all. The only way to get an Intel Mac is to buy a new or secondhand one, unless someone's willing to just give you a working one.

    (54134)
  • by BGreg,

    BGreg BGreg Oct 3, 2010 7:40 PM in response to Justin Kenward
    Level 6 (17,522 points)
    Oct 3, 2010 7:40 PM in response to Justin Kenward
    Welcome to the Apple discussions.

    You can upgrade your RAM to 2GB. If you want to see if that will help for programs you run, bring up the Activity Monitor, on your hard drive in applications/utilities. On the system memory tab look at page ins and page outs. If page outs are 10% to 15%+ of page ins, you can use more memory for what you run. A page out is when there isn't enough physical memory to run everything, and the system writes some memory to disk to make room for something else. Too much of this can hamper performance.

    On the CPU, as was pointed out, you can't upgrade it.