mac processor speed

[Nathan Buck]

First off, I'm going to guess (very accurately) that you have what
Mac-heads (and apple itself) refer to as a "Lombard" model powerbook.  the
big telling factor is the semi-translucent bronze keyboard.

I myself have one.  And the short of it is, GET MORE MEMORY.  Yes, 64MB is
not enough memory to run linux as a desktop system.  For a slightly
longer, and irritating explaination, read on:

-------------------------

I also noticed the exact same problem that you did: The mac laptop seemed
to be dog-slow compared to a similar PC I had.

Here is why:

Problem #1: Only 64mb of RAM
	Yes actually this is your biggest impactor on the performance of
your machine because of...

Problem #2 - Your dog slow harddrive.
	Yep, the harddrive you are using is a fairly slow laptop
harddrive.

These two factors actually compound the problem. 64 megabytes of memory is
just not enough to efficiently run a linux system in desktop mode. The
memory base required to run X windows, and KDE (or sawfish and gnome) on
top of all the basic system processes you're running will put you at
about 60MB of RAM usage (if you're not using any fancy themes and have a
fairly basic services startup).  And thats just a fresh startup.  If you
then consider that that only leaves your with 4MB for filesystem buffer
and cache, its pretty tight.  Then you run a program.

Thats when its all over.  The minute you move into swap space, its
basically a sea of molasses tigh deep and you just can't run, no matter
how hard you try.

Swap space responsiveness is dependant on your harddrive's seek time,
which can be catagorized according to its RPMS (4500 in your
laptop's situation no doubt).  This is slow.  Even if you're running
on of the 15,000 RPM drives from Seagate on an Ultra SCSI bus, swap is
still slow, but a 4500RPM laptop harddrive is just horrible.

Point blank, you need to upgrade your memory.  Period.  Get AT LEAST 64MB
more for it.  The memory is easy to upgrade, simply snap off the keyboard,
unscrew the metal plate, and there you are.  I HIGHLY recommend installing
128MB more.  I added 64MB and it made a terribly huge difference.
Suddenly my G3/333 Lombard laptop was OBVIOUSLY outperforming my K6-550
Desktop system with 160MB of ram.

Do the upgrade, if you get the mem off ebay, it probably won't be more
than $30.