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Is this worth the cost..?
- Thread starter brdoco
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brdoco said:
It's a G3...
Apple already doesn't really support them anymore... so why would you waste money on something that's already so outdated Apple won't support it?
brdoco said:
Let's put it this way. I have Panther on my G3 iBook 500 / 384 RAM, and to me it runs ASS slow... so slow even that I gave it to my grandfather, who just bought a printer for it yesterday, that when it printed, it spooled so slowly the PRINTER had to stop printing waiting for the COMPUTER to catch up... -_-
Panther on a 350MHz tower
Last year I bought my parents a 350 G3 blue/white tower so they could use ichat and photoshop and print while i was at college. it has like 400MB+ RAM is all, i also overclocked it to 400MHz which is very easy to do with jumpers. That is a good way to get a little more pep out of it. It is currently running 10.3.5. It fine. I use it as a print server and simple things when Im in town. It is def. slow for photoshop but it gets the job done. For a 100 bucks its totally worth it. They are great reliable machines. Mine does SETI 24/7 does print serving, and all my moms digital photos, 7+ GB. So ya, buy it, it's always nice to have a machine to test things on. If you have any other question feel free to ask, I like having mine around. Its slow of course compared to my G4 powermac and book, but hey its a mac right, what could eb better than that. better than having an old win box around running XP on a PIII 900 MHz, now that is painful. ANyways, good luck, I think you'll enjoy it, many uses with a slightly slower G3 machine.
Last year I bought my parents a 350 G3 blue/white tower so they could use ichat and photoshop and print while i was at college. it has like 400MB+ RAM is all, i also overclocked it to 400MHz which is very easy to do with jumpers. That is a good way to get a little more pep out of it. It is currently running 10.3.5. It fine. I use it as a print server and simple things when Im in town. It is def. slow for photoshop but it gets the job done. For a 100 bucks its totally worth it. They are great reliable machines. Mine does SETI 24/7 does print serving, and all my moms digital photos, 7+ GB. So ya, buy it, it's always nice to have a machine to test things on. If you have any other question feel free to ask, I like having mine around. Its slow of course compared to my G4 powermac and book, but hey its a mac right, what could eb better than that. better than having an old win box around running XP on a PIII 900 MHz, now that is painful. ANyways, good luck, I think you'll enjoy it, many uses with a slightly slower G3 machine.
Lots of websites with teh overclocking info
Here are a few:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/OC.html
http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/02/0710ek.html
http://drivejumper.com/ClockupG3/b&wclockup.html
That last one is the site I used, I just found it first. Most likely you won't be able to get 450 out of yours, but you might with some software to slow down the cache. Heat doesn't at all seem to be an issue. Good luck
Here are a few:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/OC.html
http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/02/0710ek.html
http://drivejumper.com/ClockupG3/b&wclockup.html
That last one is the site I used, I just found it first. Most likely you won't be able to get 450 out of yours, but you might with some software to slow down the cache. Heat doesn't at all seem to be an issue. Good luck
Let me give you the other side--yes, it'll work. I'm not sure what "ass slow" is but I'm sure it depends on what you need your computer to do. I also disagree with whoever said Apple doesn't support G3s anymore. It's clearly supported by the current OS and most apps will run on one. If that's not support I don't know what is.
For a second computer that won't get the processor intensive stuff thrown at it, or as a primary computer for someone who doesn't need to be on the cutting edge, this computer with Panther is an excellent choice. Odd as it will sound to some of you, lots of people use these very same Macs to earn a living running Photoshop, Flash, etc.
Using this computer as a server or a router is a waste of a good Mac. If you're not going to use it, sell it to somebody who needs it.
For a second computer that won't get the processor intensive stuff thrown at it, or as a primary computer for someone who doesn't need to be on the cutting edge, this computer with Panther is an excellent choice. Odd as it will sound to some of you, lots of people use these very same Macs to earn a living running Photoshop, Flash, etc.
Using this computer as a server or a router is a waste of a good Mac. If you're not going to use it, sell it to somebody who needs it.
Horrortaxi said:
It's already been announced that further OS revisions will not have the necessary support for many features on a G3 machine, so in that regard any form of future planning should be disregarded.
Furthermore I should ask you if you've even used a machine comparable to this recently... I still HAVE my iBook and I can tell you that it lags considerably, even opening up the HD. And this is after I've repaired as much as I can on it.
This is a solid machine.
IF its a blue and White tower, you CAn run Panther. As for speed, it will run fair as is. If you get a decent PCI video card it will run well. If you invest another 125 for a G4 it will run very well.
I have a BW G3 tower that was upgraded to a G4 500. A PCI Radeon 7000. It benchmarks with XBench along side my Sawtooth 450. Of course, by today's standards that is slow. But for 250 it is a steal, and in all honesty, using that machine for Safari, Office, and iTunes music playing it works just fine. Will it play new games, nope. Does it ever slow down? Of course, but does it open PDFs, do word and such fine, and play music and surf the web? Sure nuff and Panther runs fine.
Do not let others tell you because its old it will not work. If you have no Mac or one older, it will be better. Even stock as a G3 350, Panther will be usable. A g4 upgrade from http://www.macsales.com will help a lot as OS X loves the G4. But it will be a solid Mac with Pather.
If its a BEIGE G3 you will needs hacks to run Panther. That generation runs Jag fine, but its quirky with Panther and that is WITh the hacks.
IF its a blue and White tower, you CAn run Panther. As for speed, it will run fair as is. If you get a decent PCI video card it will run well. If you invest another 125 for a G4 it will run very well.
I have a BW G3 tower that was upgraded to a G4 500. A PCI Radeon 7000. It benchmarks with XBench along side my Sawtooth 450. Of course, by today's standards that is slow. But for 250 it is a steal, and in all honesty, using that machine for Safari, Office, and iTunes music playing it works just fine. Will it play new games, nope. Does it ever slow down? Of course, but does it open PDFs, do word and such fine, and play music and surf the web? Sure nuff and Panther runs fine.
Do not let others tell you because its old it will not work. If you have no Mac or one older, it will be better. Even stock as a G3 350, Panther will be usable. A g4 upgrade from http://www.macsales.com will help a lot as OS X loves the G4. But it will be a solid Mac with Pather.
If its a BEIGE G3 you will needs hacks to run Panther. That generation runs Jag fine, but its quirky with Panther and that is WITh the hacks.
brdoco said:
Yes, but if it does TODAY what they need, then why does TOMORROW matter so much? It is a good deal and even as a G3 Panther does run, apps do work, and each individual's expectations of an OS will vary. Some are used to some wait and responsiveness, others cannot tolerate anything.
Will Tiger run on it? Probably not. But to use Panther of today with Office X and Mail, and Safari it will do just fine. If the Mac costs 100, plus a G4 upgrade for 125 and a video card for 100 its 325. You still cannot get a tower chasis Mac for under 400 at 500 mhz with a G4, so its not a bad deal. Its got Firewire, USB, and if its a rev 2 you can add more internal drives. Not bad. Will is crank out garageband tunes or FCP effects/ Nope, but then the user should go buy a modern Mac. But for hoe or simple office use its just fine.
Will Tiger run on it? Probably not. But to use Panther of today with Office X and Mail, and Safari it will do just fine. If the Mac costs 100, plus a G4 upgrade for 125 and a video card for 100 its 325. You still cannot get a tower chasis Mac for under 400 at 500 mhz with a G4, so its not a bad deal. Its got Firewire, USB, and if its a rev 2 you can add more internal drives. Not bad. Will is crank out garageband tunes or FCP effects/ Nope, but then the user should go buy a modern Mac. But for hoe or simple office use its just fine.
vraxtus said:
seamuskrat said:
Well, I suppose the most important thing at the moment is what he will be using it for. Like I noted above, my 500 mhz iBook had trouble spooling a Word document with just the text "test" on it, to the extent that the printer was waiting for the CPU to finish spooling. That, in my mind, is pretty damn sad.
dude i run 10.4 on a b&w g3 stop being analy retentive. panther will be fine and it's supported for 10.4 for $100 get that thing as fast as you can, where are you getting it from may i ask?
your ibook, dude has a 66MHz bus a 2.5" HD and a video card thats about half as fast, the 500MHz ice books sucked, once you get onto the 600MHz mobility radeon ibooks they are fine macs and i'm typeing on one 10.4 right now and i can sure as hell fire up open office and not have any lag (dont use mico$oft stuff)
(btw get a 7200rpm HD in there and a cheap g4 upgrade and you blazeing away)
as a final note were talking about $100 here look at http://www.lowendmac.com they are b&w lovers and there value is high enough that you could sell it straight and make a profit.
your ibook, dude has a 66MHz bus a 2.5" HD and a video card thats about half as fast, the 500MHz ice books sucked, once you get onto the 600MHz mobility radeon ibooks they are fine macs and i'm typeing on one 10.4 right now and i can sure as hell fire up open office and not have any lag (dont use mico$oft stuff)
(btw get a 7200rpm HD in there and a cheap g4 upgrade and you blazeing away)
as a final note were talking about $100 here look at http://www.lowendmac.com they are b&w lovers and there value is high enough that you could sell it straight and make a profit.
Hector said:
Really, you run 10.4? How might I ask do you HAVE 10.4 WHEN IT'S NOT YET BEEN RELEASED?
Furthermore, the B&W only has a 33 mhz gain on bus speed... not enough to make up for a 150 mhz CPU difference... so you're clearly wrong there.
On top of that, the graphics chipset is THE SAME. The only thing that is different is the VRAM, which for Panther won't even make a difference, since QX isn't even enabled on PCI video-based Macs...
You seriously have NO idea what you're talking about... why would he put more money into an already aging computer, when he could have put it into a better PB in the first place...
vraxtus said:
I'm running 10.4 developers preview, the cpu speed is badly bottlenecked by the sytem bus on your ibook, it slows down the ram and the entire system, as for the video card being twice as fast it is as vram makes a big difference when it's that low and mobile chips are a fair bit slower than desktop versions, as for quartz you can enable it via a hack called pci extreme or somthing, you need a radeon 7000 or 9200, you can pick up a flashed 7000 cheaply.
and as i said a 3.5" HD makes a huge speed difference, ecpecially if you get a 7200rpm one.
fortionally for me you are the one that dosen't know what you are talking about.
hehehehe
Just for the record:
There are many users of Blue and White G3 towers that are very happy with them. They can be upgraded rather extensively and whether wise or not, made to go as fast a 1gig. In most cases this is fine for normal uses.
I have never owned an older generation iBook, but I do have a 500 Pismo and it runs Tiger Dev Preview. I have not tried it on my BW G3 system. As a developer, ( I attenedded WWDC) I test on older Macs in case of diaster. My Pismo runs 10.4 about as fast as I would expect an early OS to run. Its slower than Panther, but faster than Cheetah and about the same as Jaguar was on this model.
Bottom line, is that older Macs do have a life. Its hard to compare desktops to laptops in older Macs as the video chips were radically different and the bus speeds varied a lot.
Also, how the OS was installed makes a difference. Whether technically accurate or not, if you have a drive that is upgraded from 9.2 to 10.0, to 10.1, etc. It will not perform as well as a clean installed drive of 10.3 I have two twin macs and I know this as one was upgraded cause I was too lazy to back up the other I wiped and there is a noticeable difference in responsiveness.
But speed is subjective. Some folks also like the idea of hacking and building their Mac. I say whatever works. Plus, how many PC users can say that XP Pro runs on their 1999 PC? You have to hand it to Apple that 10.3 runs useably well on a 1999 Mac. With RAM update.
There are many users of Blue and White G3 towers that are very happy with them. They can be upgraded rather extensively and whether wise or not, made to go as fast a 1gig. In most cases this is fine for normal uses.
I have never owned an older generation iBook, but I do have a 500 Pismo and it runs Tiger Dev Preview. I have not tried it on my BW G3 system. As a developer, ( I attenedded WWDC) I test on older Macs in case of diaster. My Pismo runs 10.4 about as fast as I would expect an early OS to run. Its slower than Panther, but faster than Cheetah and about the same as Jaguar was on this model.
Bottom line, is that older Macs do have a life. Its hard to compare desktops to laptops in older Macs as the video chips were radically different and the bus speeds varied a lot.
Also, how the OS was installed makes a difference. Whether technically accurate or not, if you have a drive that is upgraded from 9.2 to 10.0, to 10.1, etc. It will not perform as well as a clean installed drive of 10.3 I have two twin macs and I know this as one was upgraded cause I was too lazy to back up the other I wiped and there is a noticeable difference in responsiveness.
But speed is subjective. Some folks also like the idea of hacking and building their Mac. I say whatever works. Plus, how many PC users can say that XP Pro runs on their 1999 PC? You have to hand it to Apple that 10.3 runs useably well on a 1999 Mac. With RAM update.
Look at this...
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html
Quite a few of these older machines won't be coming along to the Tiger party, but they'll run Panther.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html
Quite a few of these older machines won't be coming along to the Tiger party, but they'll run Panther.
Hector said:
Unfortunately for me, your English is so horrible I can't understand half the things you say!
But as far as it goes,
1) Why do you want him to spend MORE money on a machine that is already obsolete, and not even really worth saving?
2) You've just said there's huge CPU bottlenecks! And even with a slower processor, where the bottleneck will be less, it's STILL A SLOWER CPU.
Basically, you're encouraging him to not just spend $100, but add another $200 onto that... that's a good deal??? Half the things, such as replacing the HD, flashing the video card, or hacking the OS for PCI QX he MAY NOT EVEN KNOW HOW TO DO, and IT MAY TAKE HIM LONGER TO FIGURE THAT OUT THAN IF HE JUST GOT A NEWER COMPUTER!!!!
Nice job, being wrong again, that is.
seamuskrat said:
I agree with you here, but what I'm saying is that all everyone has pointed to here was not just that he should spend $100, but upgrade and upgrade and upgrade for at least another $200 more!
If I had that $300, I'd have just put it towards a faster PB, rather than trying to resurrect an older machine that IMO requires just too much time and effort to salvage...
Who honnestly cares if he wants to spend a little more money and make a desktop mac run a little better. It will still do for day to day tasks (IM, web browsing, e-mail, iTunes etc..). Actually i just bought an older Mac (the B&W in my sig) to do Dreamweaver development on as well as a few other apps i would rather run on a desktop vs. my iBook just so theyre in one place all the time.
Older Macs can still do a lot with a few little upgrades, but its never going to be a G5.
Older Macs can still do a lot with a few little upgrades, but its never going to be a G5.
rhpenguin said:
.... He might? Maybe he's in a tight budget already, and that's why he wants a low end mac, not a newer one?
vraxtus said:
Im refering to like a HDD upgrade (40gb even would be a decent upgrade if you can still find that size of drive) or RAM (PC133 is uber cheap)...
A new HDD is a must if your going to run Panther though.. 6GB or so is VERY limiting..