Please help me determine a fair price for this PowerBook G3

No, i think the Lombard is the oldest Panther supported computer.
You can install OSX with Xpostfacto, but i've heard that older powerbooks has problems with the graphics (they only runs in 256 colours).

If you are planning to install osx, go for 10.2, its the safest.
And the little extra few things that os 10.2 don't support and 10.3 does, would run horrible slow on the pdq. (The walstreets and pdq models are often mixed up, many calls them wallstreet II series)

The PDQ IS effectively the Wallstreet, but with a standardized 14" screen, and the same motherboard across the line. It won't run Panther natively, so yes, you're stuck at Jaguar. As for the price, I'll try to figure this out in US pricing, but forgive me if I'm a bit off, being Canadian and all.

512MB PC133 SODIMM is worth $100 at least. The DVD drive, believe it or not, can go for $100 on its own, though the card is most often bundled with it. The USB and Firewire cards are worth $30 each. Cables don't matter. Most likely he hasn't swapped out the hard drive, so expect it to be from 2-6GB. The machine alone is worth $100-200. Offer him $250, but let it go as high as $300 if he complains. More than likely he'll take the $250. I suppose you could go as high as $350, but that's pushing it. Most of the price in this item is the add-ons and upgrades.

I am too lazy to actually figure out the pricing (sorry), but if you don't mind doing a little research yourself, you could always go to eBay and see what the "going, going, gone" prices are for this class of machine. Its not perfect, but it might give you a good idea. As far as the wireless card, cnet.com is a great resource, it gives you rating of their signal strength and range (I got a Netgear router and card based on thier reviews last year).

Keep in mind that you probably wont get very good graphics performance with this model, considering the strains that Quartz (osX GUI) puts on the video card, but if your needs are modest, I assume you will be fine.

Assuming you do get this machine, this site will help you squeeze some extra performance out of it: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020221092653868

Elan0204 said:

Thanks, TLRedhawke! I'd love some more input on pricing though, so others please feel free to weigh in.

Click to expand...

TRedHawk's pretty accurate. The computer sans extras is only worth $100-$200. The wallstreet is the thick g3 powerbook.

The real gem of the G3 powerbook line is the pismo. Very nice computer even today. Load it up with two batteries and you get ~9 hours battery life. The lombard and wallstreet have 66mhz buses and very slow graphics. The pismo upped the graphics and bus speeds (100mhz) considerably and therefore are still good computers today. The poor graphics and bus of the lombard and the wallstreet make it pretty obsolete. These were both very nice machines in their day, and I actually prefer the styling of the G3 powerbooks over todays machines, but OSX is just too demanding for these machines.

This little application can give you all the details of every mac ever made. Pretty useful little app: http://www.mactracker.ca/

Be warned that the DVD drive will not be able to play DVDs in OSX. You will need to boot into OS9 for DVD playback.

I still have this machine, and though I never use it, selling it is more trouble than it's worth.

I'll warn you, that though I still love everything about this machine (almost as much as the Lombard/Pismo) and its personality, there is very little that you can do with it now beyond the internet.

I wouldn't pay more than 200-250 for it, and even then I hold on to that for the next PB update, or get a new iBook.

Actually, the machine isn't entirely that bad, though it lacks a lot of the features that make the Pismo especially desirable. Sonnet sells some processor upgrades for it so that it can run a fair bit better, but the lack of video ram, as well as onboard USB and Firewire do cripple the machine somewhat.

That being said, since this particular machine does include USB and Firewire cards, it wouldn't run too badly. I wouldn't rely on it as a mobile machine, due to weight and undoubtedly unexceptional battery life, though it would run fairly well as a dual battery system. With a processor upgrade (which goes up to G4 500MHz) the machine can handle many of the current applications. I considered grabbing one of these myself, but instead opted to work on a Franken-Pismo.

AmbitiousLemon said:

The poor graphics and bus of the lombard and the wallstreet make it pretty obsolete

Click to expand...

FYI: my Lombard works just fine as a portable - browsing, emailing, iTunes, writing docs, etc. No speed demon, no, but not obsolete. The Wallstreet would probably be just fine running Jaguar, as, spec-wise, it's pretty similar to the Lombard (just doesn't run Panther officially).

Lombard is considerably thinner than the Wallstreet or PDQ. Certainly, a PDQ will function quite well as a wireless word processor, or as we like to refer to them at work, a "glorified typewriter", but you do have to consider the weight. Granted, the extra size and weight also provides a 2nd PC Card slot. eBay is overpriced on this model, as it tends to be on many models. That's what happens when you allow the world to make their best offer. For the money you want to spend, this is a great deal. I've seen early clamshell iBooks go for about that much, with nowhere near feature parity.

As for the hard drive, it really shouldn't have an issue with them. The only real concern would be software support. OS 8 or 9 may have trouble with a larger drive on this machine, but OS X should have little trouble with it. The service manual for the product doesn't seem to indicate any problems with larger hard drives. I don't know how high you intended to go, but all in all, it shouldn't be much of an issue. Whatever you do, use at least a 5400 RPM drive though. If it's a new battery, it's not an issue. In fact, that battery sells for $100-150 alone, so bonus for you.

As for the price thing, it's not that I think the machine isn't worth $300-400, it's that I don't think the vendor in this case is going to hold out for it. We all want you to get the best deal possible. My original price recommendation stands. It's rather surprising what older Macs (especially laptops) are worth nowadays. Apple machines have this odd tendency to maintain a rather high price point as they age, especially by comparison to PCs. Admittedly, part of this is due to the style factor, but another part of it is that Apple machines are overengineered at times. That is, a machine that is 6 years old, like the PDQ in question, is capable of running current applications. Apple eliminated it from running Panther, but it's certainly capable. Moreover, it's more than capable of running applications written for OS 10.2 and 10.3. Think you could run Photoshop CS on a Pentium 2 300MHz?

Anyway, there's no need to have second thoughts. If this is all you can afford to spend, then this is quite clearly the machine for you, and you'll be getting a great deal on it.

No Details here...

$300 max for everything $175 for the Computer only. Only Macs over 600 Mhz are worth more than $300-$500. Unless they are processor upgradable.

The Aria Extreme is one of the more popular Mac compatible cards. These things were formerly called "Orinoco" for reference. The girl on the TiBook 2 seats down from me appears to be using a Linksys card, however. The best way to do this is to check out http://www.macwireless.com, as they specialize in all of this.

Hmm...actually, MacWireless is good, as they make all their own cards, but they can be a bit pricy. Cisco cards and Aria Extreme work natively with Mac OS X, but most brands do not. However, http://wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net/ is the page for an open source driver to support a number of third party cards. They only have a driver up to Jaguar, but that's just perfect for you.

The machine with all the extras is most probably worth $300-400 all totalled. So, if he takes an offer of under $300, then you're getting a good deal.