Bought an iMac Snow: OSX or OS9?

[coupdetat]

I used to have an iMac Rev D. 333mhz machine that I ran OS9 on. However, this new 600mhz I got seems to be right on that boundary between OSX and OS9 usability. I have 768mb RAM, and thinking about upping to 1gb soon. What do you guys think I should do with it? On one hand, I want a productivity-focused machine that is fast (OS9) and stable (not OS9). Also, there are some games like Deus Ex and Alpha Centauri that I'd love to play which would necessitate OS9. But having all of the additional media features such as bluetooth, modern iTunes, Safari 3, etc. with Tiger would be great as well.

So..... Any good arguments to go either way? I don't want to dual-boot, because then I'll face the same dilemma EVERY day!

 

[im_to_hyper]

I'd say that you should upgrade to 1GB RAM and then just run your your games in Classic mode. Since they are older, you should be able to run them fine from right within Tiger. That way, you get your rock-solid stability and decent speed (Tiger ran great on my 500MHz iBook with 384MB RAM awhile back) and you can still play your games... Therefore, keep both! But make Tiger your primary.

 

[coupdetat]

I tried running Deus Ex under Classic on my Powerbook G4 1.33ghz and the results were pretty awful. I think running natively in OS9 would be much better.

Is there any way to get decent stability under OS9? I've read other people achieving several months of uptime, but my Rev.D would crash constantly. I feel much more efficient working under OS9, though.

Also, CLARISWORKS!

 

[Cabbit]

I had a G3 400 imac pink running tiger very nicely. So the 600 will be just fine for tiger. Game performance will vary i would suspect.

 

[Sly]

No need to make a decision between OS X & OS 9 you can dual boot both OS's on the G3 iMacs.

 

[im_to_hyper]

OP already said, wants a decision, not a dual-boot solution.

 

[coupdetat]

I decided to go with OS9 for now. I like the GUI too much, and from what I've been reading, crash prevention is mostly about picking a well-designed set of apps. I'm going to name this computer "EVE" after the robot in Wall-E