Clamshell for College

I can't answer your other questions, but the ram limit on a clamshell is either 544 or 576, depending on whether there's 32 or 64 on the motherboard. In other words, it will accept a 512 chip. I'd go with panther over jaguar (I can't speak to tiger on these laptops).

well thats good news! could you recommend any cheap memory suppliers in the uk? and also, which combo drives are compatible with the clamshell and also fit the bezel?

thanks!

Tiger runs reasonably well on a 466 with enough ram and a fast enough hard drive (5400 rpm). I had a 466 mhz iBook SE w/320 mb of ram and an 80 gb 5400 rpm drive. Worked like a charm. My parents have that machine now. Good times.

i just looked it up on LEM and the RAM limit is 576.

Just curious - are you really attached to the Clamshell models?

I ask because the cost of a used Clamshell plus a 466MHz Clamshell mobo is going to be more than the cost of a 500MHz dual USB (i.e. white/"ice") iBook - and that unit will have a larger HD, faster CPU, brighter higher-res screen, better compability with 10.4 Tiger, higher RAM ceiling and faster system bus.

Even if you find a whole 466MHz Clamshell iBook, it will likely cost as much, or even a little more, than a 500MHz dual USB iBook.

Best,
Matt

I would say that his choice of a clamshell over a dual usb iBook is because of the fact that logic board failure on a clamshell is unheard of, while a dual usb iBook with its original logic board is extremely rare.

If given the choice between a 466 mhz clamshell and a 500 mhz dual USB (and I have owned both), I would choose the 466. The performance difference is minimal.

good point, but my choice is purely down to aesthetics. i love the shape, colours and design in general. A dual-usb is just a white square. Had one for 3 years, got bored of it, i never get bored of macs.

Oliver

ive used a 466 before and i LOVE them i like them so much more than the dual usb ibooks. durable and they do handle tiger nicely.

expensive now, but i say worth it

Ok, im hearing 2 different stories here. Can a 466 with 576mb ram run tiger nicely? and i still need help about the tangerine casing!

Oliver

Lets just say my MacBook Pro with 512mb of RAM doesn't run Tiger very nicely. You run out of RAM faster than you will ever belive. I tried Tiger on my 366 ibook with 320Mb and took it right back off and went back to Panther. My 450MHz Powermac with 768mb runs it ok. If you plan on using Dashboard, you'll lose all that RAM really fast. With Dashboard up on my Macbook along with iTunes, Safari, and iChat I only have 6mb of RAM left out of 512. So i guess my answer to your question is this. No, it will not run tiger nicely. It can run it, but not nicely.

OS X on 800x600 display make Homer go crazy. :^b

--Peace

The 800x600 display is the 466 mhz Clamshell's biggest liability. As long as you don't expect to do more than one thing actively at a time, that will be a big issue. If you're using Word and iTunes (with iTunes in the small window), you should be good. If you're vision is less than stellar (I had my 466 around the time that my vision started degrading), the 800x600 display is a great thing as everything is nice and big - sharp too - 800x600 on later machines looks horrible.

As for tiger, with a big fast hard drive and 320-576 mb of ram, you should be good. Dashboard is memory hungry, however Dashboard has proven to be one of those things that was cool and neat for a week and then I stopped using it.

As for tiger on a MacBook with 512, that's an extremely unpleasant situation. Due to the shared video ram and rosetta, the intel build of OS X is more memory hungry than the PowerPC build (256 is ok for PPC - don't expect greatness). With a MacBook, Mac Mini, or GMA 950 equipped iMac 9the $999 model), 1gb is the absolute minimum amount of memory for adequate performance. I ran my MacBook with 512mb for one day before saying screw this, I'm jumping up to 1gb. How Apple thought shipping those machines with 512mb was a good idea shocks me. The 1280x800 display on my MacBook ensures that I make full use of the up close prescription reading glasses I have - in retrospect I should have held out for the 15" MacBook Pro, if only so I could see the display better - the 15" Aluminum PB I had before was great for my eyes.

Tiger is CPU and Memory Hungry. Even with my iBook 1.2Ghz 12", when I can, i stay booted from my 10.3.9 external Desktop HDD with FW. That's even faster than the Tiger I have on the built-in Hard drive. Even with the IEEE 1394 400 Bottle-neck, it runs significantly Faster due to not having Spotlight and dashboard installed.
I like Tiger, but When I am running Java Programs (which I frequently do for games and other stuff) and doing video work, I wait till I can boot from my External due to how bad Tiger is with Java and the other resources it uses

I have 768MB of ram, and if I do video encoding under OS X Tiger, it takes about 2x as Long to do it because of how little ram it leaves me. that, and the lowest CPU Idle I get is 35% and no lower. So there isn't much room when it comes to Resources. Panther idles at 13%. as you can see, it's a big increase with having Tiger on there

I will be getting a 350MHz B&W G3 which I will OC to 400 (or if I am lucky, 450) and will be about on par with it, and will definately be using Panther due to how much it uses.

I advise that you stick with panther and it will be fine. There is really nothing with that speed the iBook has that you will need tiger for. I don't even think Tiger was a major thing in the OS X Releases IMHO, all it did was make things more complicated. It's almost as bad as 10.2 with the CPU Sucking it does.

thanks everyone for your help. im sticking with panther! i found this site where the poster has put a 466 motherboard in his tangerine, and cut out the hole. looks a bit crude to me, does anyone know of a way to make the hole smoother? and also, i need a 466 motherboard, so if anyone has one, send me a pm. thanks!

Someone with a MacNN acccount should point the modder to: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=89960 to see how to resize a partition with a Ubuntu CD, and not have to reformat and reinstall.