Powerbook Freezes

I've had a 15" high resolution (the one with the 1440x960 resolution) PowerBook G4 for about 10 months now, and up until a few days ago I've been dealing with hard freezes every couple of days or so. Very annoying to say the least. Well, recently I came across a useful thread on the Apple discussion forums that appears to have completely solved my problem.

The fix goes something like this:

1. Download and install Apple's Computer Hardware Understanding Development Tools (link)
2. Restart the PowerBook
3. Go into System Preferences and select the new Processor preference pane
4. Uncheck the "Allow Nap" option

It's important to note that this fix is only temporary. The next time your PowerBook is rebooted this setting will be lost. For a permanent fix just make your /etc/rc.local contain:

#!/bin/sh
# Disable CPU NAP
/usr/bin/hwprefs cpu_nap=0

There is a drawback to this however. The CPU NAP setting is what allows your processor to automatically adjust its speed downward when it's not being used heavily. This has the advantage of conserving power and lessening the amount of heat generated. So with the CPU NAP disabled, you're looking at more heat and a shorter battery life. Let's all hope for a better solution from Apple (not likely to come now that they're focused on Intel).

Hopefully this will save someone the months of agony that it caused me.

UPDATE: 27 days and counting (as of September 6th) without a crash!!! Everything seems to be fixed, although things are much hotter and my battery life is significantly shorter. It's better than crashing though.

[~]$ uptime
10:38  up 27 days, 12:57, 3 users, load averages: 1.57 1.20 0.95