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#1 2009-10-09 12:53 pm
400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
So my Intel iMac's in the shop, getting its motherboard replaced under warranty. During these estimated 3 to 5 days, I am using a 400mhz G4 that somebody gave me quite some time ago. Considering how we all used to drool over these babies when they were brand new, it's just sad how the thing no-longer measures up.
I just tried to watch a video on YouTube just now, and just to be able to play it, I had to pause the thing, wait for it to be fully loaded, and then press play. Even then, the frame rate was about two frames per second, if that.
This G4's got 896MB of RAM and a third party graphics card of some sort, so you'd expect better.
Heck, my phone's got a 372mhz processor and just 128MB of RAM, and it plays YouTube videos better than this.
How sad. I wonder if there's anything to be done about it?
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs
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#2 2009-10-09 2:11 pm
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
Try a different browser
View the lower resolution videos.
Open only the browser, and only one browser window at a time.
Make sure that at least 10% of your HD is empty.
Get it
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#3 2009-10-10 8:24 am
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
Thanks. Now could you check with the Apple Store and find out when they'll be done fixing my iMac?
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs
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#4 2009-10-10 12:56 pm
- sturner
- Royal High Poobah
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- From: Carrollton, TX USA
- Registered: 2000-01-31
- Posts: 13828
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
IT's fixed. I picked it up yesterday.
I'm not dead yet.
There are 3 types of people, those who can count and those who can't.
"There are few things graven in stone, excepting your date of death."
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#6 2009-10-11 7:21 am
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
I find it rather impressive that a 10 year old machine can run 10.4, read some SD divx, have recent browsers and so on.
Flashvideo is the least effiscient thing ever anyway.
A friend of mine uses a G4/500 as a daily home machine. She uses the web, iTunes and iPhoto. On a 30€ machine.
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Hackintosh C2Q 2.4Ghz - 4GB - GF9800GT - Mac Pro case
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#7 2009-10-11 6:53 pm
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
It's my understanding that the iPhone has a special processor for decoding h.264 videos, which is what YouTube has been using for the past couple of years. Otherwise, the iPhone's CPU would not be powerful enough.
My iBook G3 is great for EVERYTHING I want, with the exception of online videos. I consider the spread of h.264 to be an case of planned obsolescence.
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#8 2009-10-12 1:30 am
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
A 400 MHz G4 is now *10* years old. It's more than 10 times slower than a recent system. I'd agree with pirloui and say it's impressive that it's usable at all.
Flash is pretty smurf on any Mac, and is entirely CPU based to boot. I'm not surprised Youtube wasn't working.
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#9 2009-10-12 8:11 am
- avkills
- demyelinated brain matter
- Registered: 2001-05-09
- Posts: 7107
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
G4 Macs make damn fine FTP servers though. (especially when you have a Ultra160 RAID hooked up.)
-mark
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#10 2009-10-12 8:55 am
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
mackerm wrote:
It's my understanding that the iPhone has a special processor for decoding h.264 videos, which is what YouTube has been using for the past couple of years. Otherwise, the iPhone's CPU would not be powerful enough.
Who said anything about iPhone? I have the Samsung Impression, which is a much better phone, and also more affordable.
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs
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#11 2009-10-12 8:56 am
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
~Coxy wrote:
Flash is pretty smurf on any Mac, and is entirely CPU based to boot. I'm not surprised Youtube wasn't working.
If I use KeepVid or Safari to download the .flv files that YouTube's trying to play, and then open them in VLC, they work just fine.
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs
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#12 2009-10-12 10:26 am
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
Bren wrote:
Who said anything about iPhone? I have the Samsung Impression, which is a much better phone, and also more affordable.
Oops, didn't mean to insult your phone. But my point remains valid. Yours is powered with an ARM Cortex-A8 which was specifically designed with
NEON™ signal processing extensions to accelerate media codecs such as H.264 and MP3
I think in the Mac|Live podcast they said that the iPhone was about as powerful as an eight year old laptop, it just has a specially-designed video accelerator.
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#13 2009-10-12 10:37 am
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
Bren wrote:
~Coxy wrote:
Flash is pretty smurf on any Mac, and is entirely CPU based to boot. I'm not surprised Youtube wasn't working.
If I use KeepVid or Safari to download the .flv files that YouTube's trying to play, and then open them in VLC, they work just fine.
So, problem solved? (I do the same trick, only I use Wimpy Video Player. I found it much better than VLC for .flv files)
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#14 2009-10-12 11:04 am
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
mackerm wrote:
Oops, didn't mean to insult your phone.
I was just kidding. See my many posts in the Gaming forum, where I like to go on tirades about how the Dreamcast is the best home videogame console ever created. I occasionally make insane statements just to annoy people.
The Samsung Impression is not without its virtues, but it's no iPhone killer.
Still, I think the iPhone would definitely be better if it had the Impression's slide-out, back-lit qwerty keyboard.
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs
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#15 2009-10-12 2:03 pm
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
Ahhh... here's the player I've been using. Looks like they've done an update recently. http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wim … layer.html
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#16 2009-10-12 6:36 pm
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
Bren wrote:
See my many posts in the Gaming forum, where I like to go on tirades about how the Dreamcast is the best home videogame console ever created. I occasionally make insane statements just to annoy people.
Do you mean to say that the Dreamcast isn't the best videogame console ever created? I mean, come on. A memory card that's also a Tamagotchi has to be worth something.
There's what you love to do, and then there's what you get paid to do. Those two things are often different.
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#17 2009-10-13 3:01 pm
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
Yeah, the DC rocks my socks.
Mackerm, thanks for that link regarding the Arm Cortex. I had no idea my phone was so bad-smurf!
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs
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#18 2009-10-13 6:08 pm
- jerwin
- Sophist
- From: The Garden of Pure Ideology
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Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
mackerm wrote:
It's my understanding that the iPhone has a special processor for decoding h.264 videos, which is what YouTube has been using for the past couple of years. Otherwise, the iPhone's CPU would not be powerful enough.
My iBook G3 is great for EVERYTHING I want, with the exception of online videos. I consider the spread of h.264 to be an case of planned obsolescence.
Just how fast is your connection to the net?
Some subjects actually enjoy pain, and withhold information they might otherwise have divulged in order to be punished.
Central Intelligence Agency. (1983). Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual
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#19 2009-10-13 6:51 pm
- sturner
- Royal High Poobah
- Moderator
- From: Carrollton, TX USA
- Registered: 2000-01-31
- Posts: 13828
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
He has a very, VERY, VERY, VERY fast connection.
The lucky stiff.
I'm not dead yet.
There are 3 types of people, those who can count and those who can't.
"There are few things graven in stone, excepting your date of death."
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#20 2009-10-13 11:43 pm
Re: 400mhz G4 PowerMac, oh how the mighty have fallen.
jerwin wrote:
mackerm wrote:
It's my understanding that the iPhone has a special processor for decoding h.264 videos, which is what YouTube has been using for the past couple of years. Otherwise, the iPhone's CPU would not be powerful enough.
My iBook G3 is great for EVERYTHING I want, with the exception of online videos. I consider the spread of h.264 to be an case of planned obsolescence.
Just how fast is your connection to the net?
The kind of ATT DSL that costs $30/month.
ATT wrote:
Downstream Speed: Up to 3.0 Mbps
Upstream Speed: Up to 512 Kbps
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