Am I crazy? (Mac OS 9 User)

[TSE]

Soooo my Windows PC's hard drive completely failed, so it's been sitting in the basement collecting dust.

I was offered by my parents to get either the Pentium 3 700mhz, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9200SE, 60 GB HD Windows XP computer or the iMac G3, 333mhz, 64 MBs of RAM, and a 6 GB HD loaded with Mac OS 9.2.2 as my main computer for the past 3 weeks.

I wrote an engineering paper, put 2 GBs of music onto iTunes 2 and listened to it, browsed the web with Mozilla (Facebook, Macrumors, and other light pages), and even have loaded some old games I used to enjoy onto it.

I haven't hit a roadblock yet. And I am thinking of keeping this way until May when the free iPod promo comes up to buy a MacBook Pro.

Once I get my own house, I plan on buying one of the fastest OS 9 Machines and using it as a backup, honestly, besides some web pages loading a little funny, it has been a silky ride. I really wish it had a DVD Drive so I could watch some movies though. In some ways, I think the Interface is brilliant. I hardly ever see myself thinking about it like I do in OS X and 7.

Obviously there were reasons Apple ditched the entire platform just like Microsoft ditching DOS, but it has surprised me.

Does anyone else here enjoy Mac OS 9 and use it on a regular basis?

 

[(marc)]

I never used Mac OS 9, but I really enjoy using minimal systems. Like dwm, xterm, vim, etc. on *nix. Oftentimes mainstream systems like OS X just seem so full of bloat...

 

[dmr727]

You'll enjoy it until a Mozilla crash forces a complete reboot.

Honestly, I liked OS 9 (and earlier) just fine, but the lack of protected memory was my biggest complaint. It was certainly fast on the later PPCs.

 

[ECUpirate44]

I don't use OS 9 anymore, but hey, if your getting by with it why not? Theres nothing wrong with waiting to get a free iPod!

 

[maflynn]

Up until recently, I still had my G4 Cube setup running OS9. Sadly it was time to put the old girl into the closet. I was continually amazed at its performance running the legacy version of Office and photoshop.

 

[Ttownbeast]

My G4 has been running 10.5 now for at least 5 years--it has gone through a few hardware upgrades(currently 1.8GHZ, 2GB, 130/160GBHD). Sometimes I pop in the 9.2 CD I still have just for nostalgia then I don't miss OS 9 so much LOL I've tried Linux in this one and I am not too crazy about it for PPC even though I like it better for the Intel CPUs than Windows. There is still a chance for an old PPC if it allows you the ability to upgrade the hardware, but as far as I am concerned OS 9 is nearly obsolete.

 

[cimiyaxkin]

The Joy of OS 9

No, you are not crazy. But you do need to ditch Mozilla and find Classilla (a simple Google of that will suffice). Classilla is a port of Mozilla WaCOM that is being updated by Cameron Kaiser, remember that name, he is also the force behind tenfourfox.Classilla is not perfect but way better than just using WaCOM. Classilla + iCab will meet most of your basic browsing needs.

One of the great things about OS 9 is all the abandoware for it out there now. Macintosh Garden will hook you up with some great old classic games and applications, many of which are as useful today as they were in 2003, when I abdandoned OS 9 for OS X.

If you want crazy....check out www.system7today.com a VERY dedicated group of macheads who swear by the joy that was 7.6.1 and pre G3 macs. Their browser of choice? Netscape 4.8 with CSS turned off and some tweaks to about:config to open up the ol pipes.
Hardcore.

 

[foidulus]

Security

Security is probably your only real concern, as Apple has dropped support for OS 9 which means no new security updates, any bug thats found that allows hackers in isn't going to be fixed....on the flip side I don't know of too many malware writers that would bother to go after OS 9

Overall I don't think you would have any problems but I would be a little bit hesitant about putting sensitive information on the computer.

 

[R94N]

If it works why not.

 

[TSE]

Update!!!

Still going strong...

I actually noticed believe it or not Internet Explorer 5.1.7 is the fastest browser for OS 9. I've also been downloading all the games on Macintosh Garden because they are so damn fun. 64 Mbs of RAM is really really limiting though....

 

[Sydde]

Update!!!

Still going strong...

I actually noticed believe it or not Internet Explorer 5.1.7 is the fastest browser for OS 9. I've also been downloading all the games on Macintosh Garden because they are so damn fun. 64 Mbs of RAM is really really limiting though....

Did you try iCab? I remember that was the last browser I was using before switching to OS X full time. It did produce some odd pages and failed completely on others, but I was finding quite good for most of my needs.

 

[TSE]

Right now, I have installed:

Internet Explorer 5.1.7, Mozilla Browser, iCab 3.0.5, and Classilla 9.

Internet Explorer is the fastest one out of these 4 by far. I am pretty sure it is because it uses the least amount of RAM. However, I bet if I increased the RAM to something like 128 MBs or higher, the other browsers would be a better choice because Classilla and iCab are atleast compatible with almost every website - Internet Explorer is only compatible with text based websites or picture websites - any heavy javascript or flash websites don't work.

 

[callmemike20]

I had to look at the date after I read your post. I thought someone just decided to reply to a random 10 year old thread. I was wrong...

But, that's amazing that you have that thing running. A few years ago, I took an old computer that I found in my basement and got it working again (I would never use it as my main computer though). It was an HP with Windows 98se, 128mb ram (I upgraded from 64mb years before), a small hard drive, and like a 500mhz processor. I upgraded it to XP and it actually ran well.

 

[OKFJ]

Seize the Day and Mac Lover

NOT CRAZY at all. (unless I am too?) OS 9 has everything I need, except real quality Voices. So I run Tiger with it on my Clamshell ibook 366mhz. Sweet!
Found this page when doing a search for any Mac OS 9 community..... I have a program you might remember from 1994 called Seize the Day. Made it my business to get Seize the Day for both Mac & PC back in circulation. Mission Accomplished June 4th 2011. Check out my website for it. http://everonward.webs.com/seizetheday.htm
cheers
FJ

 

[lewis82]

Wirelessly posted (iPod touch 2nd gen: Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; fr-fr) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I couldn't run OS 9 anymore... too many crashes, it completely ruined the experience.

 

[Huntn]

If it works for you, then it can't be crazy... if it was my only computer I'd pick OS9 over any time-equivalent Windows operating system.

When I was running it (before OSX) I was very happy with it and for some reason knew a lot about how to fix misc "things" when needed, but not too often. Now, I can't remember the last time I had to fix an OS related problem. I can't see ever going back though. OSX= supremacy.

 

[sysiphus]

Not totally crazy, no. I'm dual-booting 9.2 and 10.5 on my Quicksilver (see sig) quite happily. My usage patterns really don't differ all that much one one side vs the other--either way, I block all the Flash/streaming video as possible. 9 is absolutely faster, and absolutely flies on a faster G4 and 1.5GB of RAM. The only major annoyances are the lack of WPA support for the Airport card, and the lack of AAC support in iTunes 2. Converting .docx is a bit of a pain, but nothing too awful.

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

I was on OS 9 from 1997-2005. This thread makes me want to go and live in the old days...

But I'm sure I'd be back to Snow Leopard in twenty minutes though. Sheep Shaver, anyone?

 

[roadbloc]

I think it's a great thing that you haven't hit a roadbloc.