Suggestions for increasing performance of my imac?

bringthepainhawks,

Welcome to Apple Discussions.

Apple just recently released this Knowledge Base Article, Mac Maintenance Quick Assist which lists the Top 10 Tips to Keep Your Mac in Top Form.

1) Keep Things Up to Date
2) Put Your Toys Away
3) Name Your Children
4) Prune Through Your File Forest
5) Repair Disk Permissions
6) Back Up Your Files
7) Restart Your Computer Every Once in a While
8) Check for Viruses
9) Optimize Your Hard Drive
10) Clean the Outside Too

;~)

Having as much memory as the G4 can handle will make a huge difference to its performance if you're just using the standard 256mb (you haven't filled out your profile in 'my settings' so I don't know what you have). If the HD is becoming full that could slow things down considerably for you - it's good to have a backup HD anyway, and these days as they're so cheap, no reason why not.

Your internal HD seems very small. You'd definitely benefit from having a nice external drive sitting nearby.

Try using Disk Utility to repair your startup disk (hard drive) as shown in Dr.Smokes Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption.
Here's his maintenance link so you can start a monthly maintenance program, if you haven't done so already.

Cheers!
DALE