Someone gave me a 533 MHz PowerPC G4 w/ 768 MB SDRAM.  It is running Mac OS X Version 10.3.9
(All that is from the About this Mac)

I need to upgrade this thing's OS desperately.  Almost everything internet related is stunted. What are my options???

Mac help lists the requirements for 10.4 leopard as


Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor

Mac specs
You may be SOL.
I'm limited currently with 10.4 OS  as my machines a 800 MHz ppc.

OS X likes RAM.  Lots and lots of RAM.  My laptop came with 512Mb and the first thing I did was dump the old DIMMs and install 2GB and I could probably use more.

Don't expect the 533MHz PPC to be blindingly fast by today's standards, but with more RAM and the latest OS it should be very serviceable.

If you can run Tiger which is 10.4 you will be good to go with everything modern.

Can I add ram or is that it?

Quoted: Almost everything internet related is stunted.

What browser are you using?

do the free update and get Tiger 10.4.9, its good enough for 99% of mac peoples uses

Also, get firefox 3 on that, it uses less memory

Can I make a suggestion? If you aren't dead-set on using OS X on that older machine, you might want to install the PPC (Power PC) version of Fedora Linux on that machine. Linux is a great alternative when you want to get as much use out of older hardware as possible.

I'm running it in a dual-boot configuration on a 1.33GHz Powerbook with 768MB of memory and it flies on this machine. While that may sound fast compared to yours, keep in mind that the bus speed (speed at which the processor accesses main memory, etc.) is also only 167MHz. It should perform reasonably well on your machine as well.

PM me if you need/want any pointers with installing it!