Anyway to upgrade G4 iBook?

[Deep13]

We finally have wifi in our house. Well, my wife has an iBook G4 and it is really buggy on the internet. The browser--safari--doesn't work well--keeps crashing--l and it would not let us install firefox because of the not brand new operating system. (I can't call it old since we have only had it since '03 or '04) We can't upgrade to lion because apparently the processor is incompatible.

Is there anything we can do? There's nothing wrong with the thing and it wasn't cheap. We know the wifi works because I can use it with my macbook air.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Go to your nearest Mac store and find out what the highest operating system is

that the iBook G4 will take.

2003/2004, unfortunately, IS old in computer terms. It's like dog years. An 8-year-old computer is like an 80-year-old person.

[Deep13]

2. Thanks. nt

[onehandle]

3. Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" is the last one that supports G4s. nt

[onehandle]

4. .

[onehandle]

5. Back up your Mac and clean install Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard"

The last Mac OS that supports the G4.

You can get a copy for next to nothing on eBay or maybe even Amazon.

With a Mac that old, you need to wipe and start over. I have a G4 PowerBook that I pull out now and then that connects fine.

But in the end 8 years is a lifetime, and reinstalling will only get you so far.

[Deep13]

6. thanks

[guitar man]

7. I don't know about the iBook

But I'm still running a G4 powermac from mid '03, was given to me by a friend. I did a clean install of Leopard and ran all the updates. It's running at version 10.5.8 and for an 8 year old computer is still pretty impressive.

That's one of the things I love about Macs, their longevity (as I type this from a 2001 iMac G3) :hi:

[Tesha]

8. For a browser, look for "Ten-Four Fox"

It's the latest Firefox code rebuilt to run on older MacOS X.

Mr. Tesha uses it quite successfully on his older PowerBook.

Tesha