Hey Jeff,

This is a very common issue. I too have an old G4 iBook 12". Love it. But you tube is hard to watch on it.

If the point is to have a child use it. I would sell it for $200+ dollars or whatever the value is and pickup a used iPod Touch to watch Netflix & Youtube on, connect via the local wifi in your home. The other option is to grab a nice used iPad, now that v.2 is out people will be dumping them for the upgrade so they should be going cheap.

Pumping money into a old laptop I don't think is worth it.

Check out Smalldogelectronics. They sell good quality inexpensive RAM upgrades for Mac's. Highly Knowledgeable. You can ask them if the RAM will make a large difference. I have my iBook maxed and it's still choppy. The iBook G4 has a very low level video memory (i think 32mb)  so I don't think it would really be worth your investment.

My general rule is get as much RAM as you can afford as it will only speed up cpu operational tasks.

Keep your HD 50-75% Max full at all times no more, on a G4 be sure run Disk Utilities and repair permissions and verify the directories once every 2 months depending on how much heavy usage is being done.

All the best,
Robert
NY

On Mar 18, 2011, at 9:30 PM, Jeff Palmer wrote:

> Hi everyone, friday Mac help needed.
>
> I am trying to resurrect my old iBook G4 with a 1.33 Ghz Power PC chip and 512 MB of RAM.  I was hoping it would distract my 2 year old from the computer we use day to day.  She mostly watches videos on YouTube or Netflix.  Now Netflix won't even work with a PowerPC chip and YouTube is really choppy.
>
> Is there any hope with a RAM upgrade or is this computer beyond saving?
>
> Thanks everyone.  Pmail please.
>
> Jeff