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[mectojic]

I need some help.

I've got an iBook G3 SE, with 466 Mhz and 64mb Ram. I have ordered a 512mb ram upgrade, but in the meantime, I'm rather confused and would like some help.

When I go to "About this Computer", it says that Mac OS alone uses up 37.6mb of ram (sometimes it goes even higher). Why is it so high?

In other words, if 64mb of Ram was the highest Apple provided on this late 2000 iBook before you had to upgrade it yourself, how is that reasonable? Because my Mac OS eats up 40mb, I can't even open Word '98 or Internet Explorer without having to manually lower the memory requirements. I can't play most games I wanted to try either.

Some tips or explanations would be great. Most of my Mac experience has been since ~ OS X Tiger, so I'm not familiar with such memory problems.

[teroyk]

In other words, if 64mb of Ram was the highest Apple provided on this late 2000 iBook before you had to upgrade it yourself, how is that reasonable?

That time iBook comes OS version was Mac OS 9.0.3 and with that version 64 MB  is "enough".
If you disable extensions that you don't need then you can get run one "big" application in time with Mac OS 9.2.2 to work with 64 MB with some virtual memory on.
Actually you can get Mac OS 9 work even 32 MB with 40 MB virtual memory, but reality is that using virtual memory more than RAM slow down too much.
Some resellers sold all 2000 models with 64 MB memory upgrade preinstalled to get at least 128 MB total in year 2001.

But who said that Apple was reasonable after Jobs came back? He started machines faster get old. But he wasn't think that some OS version can resurrect forever

[GaryN]

According to MacTracker, the original OS was 8.6. That would probably require even less memory.

Only old farts will remember that the iBook was made to sell for almost a grand less than a Powerbook. They shaved money off of the price by only including the least amount of "stuff" necessary for it to work. That was enough for a lot of what were then new computer users many of whom discovered that cool orange or green thing under the Christmas tree. Being able to drop a 512 Mb dimm in later and run that newfangled OSX was actually very reasonable.

[IIO]

When I go to "About this Computer", it says that Mac OS alone uses up 37.6mb of ram (sometimes it goes even higher). Why is it so high?

that is the wrong question, the right question is why apple only gave you 64 mb in the base model.

however, the most obvious little tricks (beside going back to 8.6) are

 - dont use a huge wallapaper image

 - if you have 1000 items on the desktop, clean it up (1 icon == 16kb)

 - uninstall all hardware drivers you dont need

 - enable virtual memory for all apps which allow this

[GaryN]

that is the wrong question, the right question is why apple only gave you 64 mb in the base model.

…and yet, I answered that exact question above.

[IIO]

and with the new mac pro they are back to this kind of special offers. hardly enough to boot.

[Mat]

You could disable any System Extensions you don´t need (modem, printers, language kits, ...). Also you could turn on the Operating Systes Virtual Memory in the Memory Control Panel. Performance will go down, but you can start any program at least.
You could also switch to "non-carbonized" programs, that are a lot smaller, and are incredibly non-demanding from todays point of view. RagTime 3.2 or AppleWorks 5 instead of Word, Photoshop 5 (not sure about 6?) or Illustrator 8, XPress 4.1 and such programs are highly professional, and are much less demanding. Mac OS 8.6. is always a good option, as long as you do not need 9 functionality! In my experiance it was always much more stable than any 9 version.
Also if I remember correctly 8.6 ran fine at my 6100 with 24MB Ram and virtual memory.

[IIO]

6.5 was a mixture and 7.0 is carbon. ugly stuff, yet, they would give you the media browser.