Ibook G3 (Clamshell) Help!

[roxygirl94]

Hiya!

I have been looking through the Ebay websites, and only once have I seen a clamshell that has been refurbished.😕 I wanted to do a bit of comparing, to see if the blueberry clamshells were worth a shot. I'm in love with the clamshells, but I'm a bit worried that they are not as fast, even after professional refurbishing, as other laptops. I'm looking for a clamshell that has been recently refurbished, with few scratches, no dead pixels, no missing keys, and some of the programs I find in other macs, such as iTunes, iLife, Safari, Microsoft Office, etc. Also with the macs I am looking that there are no previously installed items like games, that may cause the laptop to go a little slower. I want the system, which is called Mac OS X v10.3 Panther. The only programs I plan to install in it are the Palace Client, Palace Server, MSN Live Messenger, MSN Plus, and maybe a virus protection if I need it. Has anybody have any clue where I can find an Apple Clamshell in Blueberry that fits the description above? I would like to know the basic details like RAM and MHz. I'll try anything I can find. If I can't find a clamshell, can somebody tell me a different stylish laptop that I can use for school work, chat, and games? Also, please list the price, that would be helpful!🙂

--Kadee

 

[CanadaRAM]

Hiya!

I have been looking through the Ebay websites, and only once have I seen a clamshell that has been refurbished.😕 I wanted to do a bit of comparing, to see if the blueberry clamshells were worth a shot. I'm in love with the clamshells, but I'm a bit worried that they are not as fast, even after professional refurbishing, as other laptops. I'm looking for a clamshell that has been recently refurbished, with few scratches, no dead pixels, no missing keys, and some of the programs I find in other macs, such as iTunes, iLife, Safari, Microsoft Office, etc. Also with the macs I am looking that there are no previously installed items like games, that may cause the laptop to go a little slower. I want the system, which is called Mac OS X v10.3 Panther. The only programs I plan to install in it are the Palace Client, Palace Server, MSN Live Messenger, MSN Plus, and maybe a virus protection if I need it. Has anybody have any clue where I can find an Apple Clamshell in Blueberry that fits the description above? I would like to know the basic details like RAM and MHz. I'll try anything I can find. If I can't find a clamshell, can somebody tell me a different stylish laptop that I can use for school work, chat, and games? Also, please list the price, that would be helpful!🙂

--Kadee

There's no getting around it. A Clamshell iBook G3 is slow. Not unusably slow, but is will never be a fast machine.

If you get the machine with the original install disks, then you can format the hard drive and load the OS fresh. However, no Clamshell came with OS X 10.3 stock, so you would have to buy that separately or find a seller that was selling both the notebook and a retail OSX 10.3.

Caution: Just having 10.3 loaded on the hard drive, without the CD (or for that matter Office or iLife without the CDs) would be piracy. Clamshell machines did not come standard with Office, or iLife AFAIK - they may have shipped with iTunes and iPhoto very early versions.

Nobody can guess what you would consider stylish: You can look at all of the Mac models at www.everymac.com and decide. You'll also find specifications there for all past models of Mac.

 

[roxygirl94]

Okay,

So, I have been looking, and I have thought about even upgrading one of the laptops myself, if I can get my hands on one that has no scratches, dead pixels, etc. With a laptop being stylish, I want something with color. If I can't find something with color, well, I can get accessories. Is there someway I can take a mac clamshell, and somehow get somebody to use better parts from other macintosh laptops, to make it running a bit faster. Of course, I can always run into problems on that. I'll have a look at that website, and post back soon.

 

[Super Macho Man]

It would be an understatement to say that clamshell iBooks are not as fast as other laptops. They are slooooooow. They are like 7-8 years old. Having them professionally refurbished is not going to make them any faster. Tiny 12" screen at only 800x600 pixels, slow 66MHz bus, no firewire, slow G3 processors. Misery. If you want to run OS X you want at least 256MB of RAM, and installing all of the software you say you want to install will fill that small hard drive right up - and HD upgrades in those iBooks are a nightmare. You are mostly stuck with what you've got, upgrading is difficult/impossible because the CPU is permanently attached to the system board.

I would look at a snow iBook at the bare minimum if I were you... if you don't like how plain it is, put stickers on it or something.

 

[mBurns]

Not to pry in but..

I have a MacBook Pro CD and an iBook G3 Clamshell 466 Mhz. Granted I have the 466 Mhz model (only clamshell I would suggest at this point) and it has been refurbished with a 60 Gb HD and 576 Mb of ram, it is able to run the latest version of Tiger (10.4.9) with exceptional speed. The point I'm trying to make is, the iBook clamshell (last revision) is fine for basic tasks such as internet, IM, iTunes, etc. It's not speed-master but it's truly a portable rugged machine. My favorite thing about the clamshell is the ruggedness and look. They're fun little machines. Just my two cents. If you have any other questions about them let me know.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Is there someway I can take a mac clamshell, and somehow get somebody to use better parts from other macintosh laptops, to make it running a bit faster.

Short answer - no.

You can maximize the RAM, and you could install a larger, faster hard drive. But that's it. You can't improve the video processor or its RAM, the buss speed, the memory speed or the processor speed.

 

[Roba]

Hi i owned a 466 model to but i sold it a while ago. I to upped the ram to 576 ram and a 60GB HD later on. The Clamshell's came with a built in modem and an ethernet port so you can just connect your ethernet cable to your router if you have one if you do not wish to buy an Airport card right away. The last revision models the 366 Indigo/Key Lime and the 466 KL/Graphite do have Firewire.
I wrote a thread on it when i was looking to buy one. I thought that the 466 model was ok as a second laptop but i personally wouldn't like to use one as my main laptop but some people do. The man who i sold mine to will be using that as his main laptop at home. I could run iWork 06 and Photoshop on the Clamshell but it was not as fast as it would do on more powerful laptops but that is a given anyway. I only mainly ran it in Panther 10.3.9 as that has less ram requirements and i thought it would be less taxing on the Clamshell.
This is the thread that i posted and the one below is another FM experiences.
Good luck with this.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/220799/

https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-153204.html
General discussion on Clamshell's
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/262375/

There is also a picture thread for iBook's here-

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/167622/