G3 iBook for a back up

[steve88]

I am waiting for my imac 20 to arrive, so I am thinking of getting an inexpensive notebook as a backup for viewing photos and surfing the web. Nothing real cutting edge. My question is would a G3 ibook be a good choice for this? I have seen decent prices on ebay. I am sure the G4 powerbook is a better machine, but I really don't need that much for a backup. What are your thoughts? I want a notebook for portability too.

 

[mad jew]

Well, if your budget can stretch a little further, the G4 iBooks are far superior machines. Although I've never owned one myself, from what I've heard the G3 was pretty plagued with problems. Aside from that, the specs just don't really justify getting it over a G4 which'll be only a little more expensive.

I'm about to be in the same boat with an iMac as my main machine (if it ever gets here) and an iBook (G4) for portability and back-up.

 

[HVA]

A G3 ibook is not powerful enough for smooth iphoto viewing

 

[sonofapplepm]

All i can say is my G3 900mhz iBook works just as good as my iMac G4 800mhz for iphoto! It does all of the tasks you mentioned without problems. If price is a concern the G3 will be just fine. After all you said it was for a backup! Hope this helps!

 

[SaleenS351]

All i can say is my G3 900mhz iBook works just as good as my iMac G4 800mhz for iphoto! It does all of the tasks you mentioned without problems. If price is a concern the G3 will be just fine. After all you said it was for a backup! Hope this helps!

I second that my G3 ibook 800mhzh. does just fine for what i need it to do and can easily handle iphoto. I use it as a back up as well to my dual 2.0 PM. And it works just fine it is after all just my back up.

 

[shadowmoses]

I had a G3 ibook 933mhz and it worked amazingly for the year i had it, super fast and very reliable i would reccomend one

 

[brandon6684]

Although I've never owned one myself, from what I've heard the G3 was pretty plagued with problems.

The only problem with the G3 was lack of a vector processing unit(Altivec), but for non-Altivec operations, the G3(IBM PowerPC 750) is probably one of the most solid chips Apple has shipped, and one of the best PowerPCs made, although they don't have insanely high clock speeds, they are very good chips.

And steve88, I have an 600MHz iMac G3 and it handles all the tasks you mentioned just fine, so make sure you have plenty of RAM in the iBook(640 MB here)

 

[MarkCollette]

The only problem with the G3 was lack of a vector processing unit(Altivec), but for non-Altivec operations, the G3(IBM PowerPC 750) is probably one of the most solid chips Apple has shipped, and one of the best PowerPCs made, although they don't have insanely high clock speeds, they are very good chips.

And steve88, I have an 600MHz iMac G3 and it handles all the tasks you mentioned just fine, so make sure you have plenty of RAM in the iBook(640 MB here)

I think he was refering to the logic board issue.

I have an iBook G3 700 MHz and it's great!