Been looking at the specs and prices of PowerPC notebooks lately. I'm narrowing down towards iBook G3 Snow due to:
1. Relatively low price (unlike Clamshell or anything more powerful).
2. Mac OS 9/early OS X releases supported originally. 500MHz model for maximum compatibility?
So my plan is buy one from usedmac.com, add maximum memory and leave the hard drive as is for the time being.
The difficulty of drive replacement is much higher than I expected. I guess it could be done still...
You can install hard drives up to 9.5mm thick.
www.ifixit.com
The Translucent iBook G3 Snow is IMHO a particularly beautiful looking machine, with a decent and bright display and a great keyboard. So that would be all what can be said and praised about it - if you happen to suffer from anosmia ...
If not, be prepared, that it might sport the most strength smell, you ever encountered on a notebook. Like someone, who didn't see the showers for weeks, and that comes from desintegrating glue beneath the keyboard.
No way to mend that - you just have to bear it, if you ever want to enjoy the beauty of the iBook-G3 Snow.
Great thing: they come out of the box with os9/Panther dual-boot on a single partition.
If you're mainly looking for an os9 machine, the PowerBook-G3s are great. Display is larger, but often dimmer compared to the iBook-G3 Snow. The Wallstreet/PDQ's (coloured Apple-logo) are the missing network-link to simultaneously connect with 68k Macs via LocalTalk and to PPC via Ethernet, but them don't sport USB.
The often worn-out and scatched sticky black case, the bronze-keyboard (Lombard and Pismo, both with white Apple-logo) and the overall aspect do look a bit outdated and they are likewise big & heavy notebooks.
It's close to impossible to find a new battery - if you are happy, you'll get one with a lightweight battery-dummies instead of a ticking bomb of dead Lithium-battery.
Compared to a 300MHz Clamshell, the G3 PB offers a larger screen with higher resolution and more ports. And PowerbookG3 models don't smeel too. But they don't share the attraction of the G3-iBooks (both Clamshell and stinky Snow).
The TiBookG4 is the best and fastest choice for an os9 machine.
The display is great and bright. Certainly the most impressive display of it's time.
The 1GHz model tends to have a constantly loud fan.
They are really thin and light. Despite thin plates of metal cover they are not "full-metal" like the later intel-unibody-MacBookPro, instead of it the frame is made of painted plastic, which tends to peal off after years of usage.
The display hinges might break (but usage of WD40 might prevent that). Batteries are hard to get hands on too.
A machine great for os9, runs Tiger with ease and the faster models can cope with Leopard.
The thin metal sheets often carry bumps, do rattle a bit (like sheet metal toys) and feel somehow brittle compared to their rock-solid unibody-MBP successors.
They also come with Tiger/os9 dual-boot (and Classic) configuration out of the box.
You'll need a WLAN-To-Ethernet brigde to connect to current WLAN-encryptions for all the above mentioned Books or you might use an EdimaxMiniUSB-WLAN-Stick for Tiger or Leopard on the iBookG3 or the TiBookG4.
If I'd only have one choice, I'd go for a TiBookG4 - rather one with a CPU on the slower side, that the 1GHz model, since I don't like the fan's going berserk when there's no software to calm them down.
Just my 2cents.
