Apple G4 performance tweaks/upgrades...

I'm a bit fed up with the PowerBook G4 I bought off eBay - I'm too used to using PC's, and the PB just feels slow and clunky (granted, it's an old 1.5GHz 512MB machine, but still).

So, I'm basically after some performance advice. The way I see it there are 2 main things I can do; software tweaks and hardware upgrades.

Software;
The PB was supplied with OS X 10.4.10 but I'm wondering whether this is the most suitable for my machine. Surely, when my PB was originally released there would've been an older version installed on it (10.2 maybe?) and you'd think this would be better suited to the hardware. Would there be any kind of performance improvement if I downgraded, or is it not worth doing purely because I'd lose out on newer features?
The other option is for me to disable all the fancy-pants effects (zoomy dock, genie window minimising etC) - again, will I see much of an improvement doing this (ok, don't answer that one - bit of a lame-ass question really...I should just do it anyway and see what happens!)?

Hardware;
There are only 2 upgrades I could actually perform...more RAM and a faster HDD. The RAM upgrade is fairly cheap (£35) and would max out the supported amount, but what kind of improvement should I expect going from 512MB to 1.28GB?

I'm assuming the HDD upgrade will result in just a minor speed bump (load times in particular)? See, my PC laptop just has a 5200rpm drive, but load times don't seem anywhere near as long as the PB...

I'm not expecting any of this to result in a super-duper mean machine, but if it makes OS feel smooth and responsive I'll be happy.

 

Not sure about the HDD upgrade (mine is 5400rpm IIRC, and I have no major issues with it), but when I boosted the RAM in my Thinkpad (Pentium M 1.3Ghz, so a similar vintage) from 512MB to 1.5GB I saw a significant performance boost. Granted I'm on linux, but seeing as OSX is built on Unix, there can't be that much difference.

I can't see that downgrading OSX will help, but I'm no Mac-head so YMMV. I would certainly advise turning off the fancy effects if you can live without them though!

 

I'm no expert, but upgrading RAM would be highly recommended. I went from 1GB to 2GB in my Powerbook (1.67Ghz) and it was a good boost. Also, from what I have heard, Apple's OS releases tend to get more efficient as they get released. I've never upgraded my OS before, so that's just what i have heard.

 

Definitely max out your RAM.
If you're adventurous (and not too fussed about GBs of storage), stick a SSD in there as well