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Mac OS X worthwhile?

GFLPraxis

GFLPraxis

macrumors 604
Original poster
Mar 17, 2004
7,152
460
I've got a friend who is, well, frankly, poor; his family has very little money. A cousin donated an old computer to him last week; an iMac, 350 MHz, green, 64 MB RAM, 6 GB hard drive, running OS 9. Slot-loading.

I have some spare Mac OS X Jaguar and Mac OS X Panther install CD's (the computers I bought them for are either dead or replaced).

Anyway, I've got two questions. First, would it be worth it to install Mac OS X (Jaguar or Panther?), or would it run so bad on 64 MB of RAM that it would be worthless and just waste hard drive space?

Secondly, is their any way to get it WiFi with minimal monetary spending? Apple's internal Airport cards are too expensive. He's got a low-end Pentium 3 machine with an external USB Netgear 802.11g WiFi stick he got for $35...any driver hacks to use that, or any similar device for around $40?

He lives in Spokane.
 
GFLPraxis said:
I've got a friend who is, well, frankly, poor; his family has very little money. A cousin donated an old computer to him last week; an iMac, 350 MHz, green, 64 MB RAM, 6 GB hard drive, running OS 9. Slot-loading.

I have some spare Mac OS X Jaguar and Mac OS X Panther install CD's (the computers I bought them for are either dead or replaced).

Anyway, I've got two questions. First, would it be worth it to install Mac OS X (Jaguar or Panther?), or would it run so bad on 64 MB of RAM that it would be worthless and just waste hard drive space?

Secondly, is their any way to get it WiFi with minimal monetary spending? Apple's internal Airport cards are too expensive. He's got a low-end Pentium 3 machine with an external USB Netgear 802.11g WiFi stick he got for $35...any driver hacks to use that, or any similar device for around $40?
Click to expand...
Regarding your first question, yes - I think Mac OS X is worth it. However, Panther may not even run with that little RAM. You'll be better off with Jaguar, I would think.

Can't help with your second question, though.
 
Good suggestion; I'll test that driver on my MacBook and see if it works.

Seeing as 256 MB of RAM is only $24 here, perhaps I'll buy it for him as a gift.

The real question is, with 4 GB of free space, will it actually be at all USEFUL, or will he need a new hard drive too?
 
On the first question, my 333 Mhz iMac performs better with Jaguar than Mac OS 9. I have been able to update it all the way to OS 10.2.8 and with 256Mb RAM (total 320Mb) uprade it's performance is very sweet for a nine year old Apple. I use it as a juke box/ mail box in the garage, but even PS Elements ran very smooth when it was my main machine. It works like new, maybe even better.:) Oh, and get an external usb hdd if you plan to store any data, I was still happy with speed and performance even in this situation.
 
GFLPraxis said:
The real question is, with 4 GB of free space, will it actually be at all USEFUL, or will he need a new hard drive too?
Click to expand...

If it's going to be strictly a web / light office app computer, it should be fine. You can use something like Monolingual to trim down OS X if you need to; I think you can get a reasonable installation of Jaguar running under 2 gigs, leaving you play room.

Other things to think about...

- Make sure the firmware is ready before trying Jag!
- NeoOffice 2 is not Jag compatible, nor is OOo 2.x... so you have to explore whether you want to use an older version of OpenOffice (1.1.x) or whether there is an older version of Neo that plays with Jag
- Firefox 2 seems to be okay with Jag.
 
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