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Considering buying an Imac g3 for $50

upinflames900

upinflames900

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 20, 2009
603
0
I am thinking of possibly buying an apple imac with a power pc g3 processor. Here are the specs:
400 MHZ
192 MB RAM
12GB HD
15 inch moniter
MAC OS 9 installed

Is this a good deal for $50? I am planning on using it for light web browsing so it isn't like i need a lot of power. Ideas?
 
It'll do light web browsing...but I mean light. I have an iBook G3 with about the same specs... it's usable if you use the web browser Classilla, but don't expect to use anything with Flash. Or a lot of images. MacRumors works, but it gets a little laggy if you don't disable the ads. (Which I can't recall if you're even able to do that.)

Nontheless, $50 is a decent deal. You could probably find one for free if you looked hard enough, but it's not a bad deal either.
 
I gave away a 400mhz G4 and a 1.25ghz G4 for free. You could probably get a much faster G4 for $50 or a little more.
 
You really want something that runs 10.3 or preferably 10.4. The web browsers available in OS 9 are really, really old.

Any chance of getting an eMac? Those are G4 and came with OS X (though the older ones can boot OS 9 also).
 
It'll work with extremely light (text mainly) pages.
As others have said, you might be better off getting a g4 at least - something that can run Tiger and support the most updated web browsers. (10.3 only supports FF 2.0.0.20, and Safari 1.3.2 - can't install latest flash)
 
upinflames900 said:
I am thinking of possibly buying an apple imac with a power pc g3 processor. Here are the specs:
400 MHZ
192 MB RAM
12GB HD
15 inch moniter
MAC OS 9 installed

Is this a good deal for $50? I am planning on using it for light web browsing so it isn't like i need a lot of power. Ideas?
Click to expand...

There are people who give You the wrong info here, if You would be able to run OSX on it it runs very well,I had a Pismo 500 Ghz and it ran 10.4 and even using heavy programs like adobe, yes,those programs are slow (but useable) but simple web browsing is not slow at all.
I got a new"old pismo again and I am happy with it, They come cheap and were very expensive when They first came out,very capable then and very much capable of lots of things now.
Why do people always talk nonsense,all they see is a dual/quad core machine with expensive videocards in it,which most of them rarely use.
Wake up,there's plenty of people which are happy with a small fiat (European Car) instead of a Mercedes Benz!
Cheers Perry
 
justperry said:
There are people here who give You the wrong info here,if You would be able to run OSX on it it runs very well<i had a Pismo 500 Ghz and it ran 10.4 and even using heavy programs like adobe on it,yes,those programs are slow but simple web browsing is not slow at all...
Cheers Perry
Click to expand...

He can't install 10.4 on that g3 unless he installs more RAM (256 is the minimum).
 
justperry said:
Yes he can but You have to know how,and BTW,You can easily find cheap ram for a few bucks for that machine!
Click to expand...

Yeah its like only like $3 for a 128mb there bumps it to 256 and spend maybe spend a little on a smaller harddrive cause the stock ones are really old and tend to be slow, i tried installing osx on the stock drive it came with and took a few hours soo slow.
 
I wouldn't buy anything less than a G4 933MHz with 1GB Memory - to run Leopard. I have played with lesser systems and it's just not worth it.

To me, a G3 at $50 sounds about $30 too much.
 
MacAndy74 said:
I wouldn't buy anything less than a G4 933MHz with 1GB Memory - to run Leopard. I have played with lesser systems and it's just not worth it.

To me, a G3 at $50 sounds about $30 too much.
Click to expand...

+1

I bought a G3 600 w/ 512MB Ram and 40G HD w/ a wireless adapter for $40.
It ran Tiger fine. But anything heavy with Flash suffered.

I bought a G4 1.25Ghz w/ 1GB of Ram, SuperDrive, 1GB Ram a year ago for $80. I added another GB of RAM (because yes it actually works) and it runs Leopard pretty darn well. As well as my hack Netbook, maybe just a tad slower because of the slower hard drive.

I'd pass on that machine unless you can get it for $20-$30 and you REALLY want it.
 
justperry said:
Yes he can but You have to know how,and BTW,You can easily find cheap ram for a few bucks for that machine!
Click to expand...

How do you install without meeting the minimum system specs?

If you're going to upgrade, you might as well spend a few bucks extra on a different machine that can already run tiger. IMHO, I think that for $50 the OP could get a better mac.
 
Ok thanks for the advice, where do you think I should be looking for one of these that is free or for a g4 that is cheep?
 
I gave away an emac 1 Ghz to someone on these forums. So no, I wouldn't pay $50 for a 400 mhz G3. In fact, I wouldn't recommend a PPC mac at all at this point (about to be incompatible with the new OS), but admittedly, you're going to pay at least a couple hundred for even a first gen intel.
 
QCassidy352 said:
I gave away an emac 1 Ghz to someone on these forums. So no, I wouldn't pay $50 for a 400 mhz G3. In fact, I wouldn't recommend a PPC mac at all at this point (about to be incompatible with the new OS), but admittedly, you're going to pay at least a couple hundred for even a first gen intel.
Click to expand...

Lol i sold a 1ghz emac edu, in spring for like 200 and just recently a 733mhz powermac g4 quicksilver for 200.
 
I'd go for it. It's only $50. If you can, find a copy of HyperCard, not HyperCard Player. IMO, HyperCard is, behind Excel, the most useful application I've ever encountered. FYI, Renault used it to catalog parts for many years.
 
If you can't afford anything more, then go for it. It'll be a great machine for light usage. But if you can, try to go for a G4.

For some reason, eMacs are ridiculously cheap compared to similarly spec'd PowerMacs and iMacs. They're built like tanks and they run Panther/Tiger/Leopard very well.
 
The bad part is they are heavy, so kinda expensive to ship.

If you watch you can find deals. But most of the "Buy it now" auctions will be around $120-$130 for 1ghz and higher. I needed USB 2.0 so I went with the 1.25GHZ. But I believe the 1.0 Ghz EDU and 1.42 GHZ also have USB 2.0
 
txnoob said:
The bad part is they are heavy, so kinda expensive to ship.
Click to expand...

No kiddin'. My original Bondi weighs ~50 lbs. I was going to put it on some wire cubes, but that would have killed them.

Anybody know where I can get some OS 9 or 10.1 or 10.2 retail discs? My iMac is super slow.
 
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