My Amazing iMac G3 Find...

[eRondeau]

A few months ago I posted a Want Ad on my company's buy/sell/swap bulletin board looking for used Mac's. Macs never were popular where I live, so I didn't really expect to get any replies. But a couple of weeks ago I got an email from a guy who said he had an old Mac in the basement and his wife was bugging him to get rid of it. He was going to put it in a yard sale this spring, but then he saw my want ad. He didn't know much about it, he just used it for games for his kids. So I went to see it and WOW! It's an absolutely pristine iMac G3 "Snow" model at 600Mhz with a 40GB drive and an Apple Pro keyboard and laser mouse! The best part -- he said I could have it for a hundred bucks! My conscience got the better of me and I told him it was worth "a lot" more than $100 but he just wanted it to go to a good home. So now it's mine, I've bumped the RAM to 640MB and installed Panther (up from 9.2.2) and it's working great! Runs just about everything! Still not sure exactly what I'm going to do with it, maybe set it up at my mother's house for when I visit.

I'm not really expecting any replies but I just wanted to brag about my old iMac "deal of the century!"

 

[AutumnSkyline]

Thats pretty sweet, your really lucky for that find! Enjoy your new (well, okay..old) iMac

 

[mkrishnan]

Erm, there's at least one on eBay right now for $105 BIN and it even comes with Tiger.

But anyway, congratulations on your find! Hope you enjoy it!

 

[skubish]

Nice find.

You can get an eMac on eBay for about $150 with a lot better specs but maybe this is a more rare model.

You might be able to attach an external drive and make a server for your iTunes music.

 

[livingfortoday]

That is a pretty good deal, on eBay you'd have to pay shipping and whatnot, which would really bite into that deal. So yeah, I think you done good. Enjoy!

 

[pseudobrit]

Erm, there's at least one on eBay right now for $105 BIN and it even comes with Tiger.

But anyway, congratulations on your find! Hope you enjoy it!

I snagged a local pickupable G4 DA466 PM for $100 on eBay last year. G3 and early G4 Macs can be had for a song these days and run fairly decently with newer software.

 

[polevault139]

I just picked up an iMac G3 400MHz for a whopping $0. I just looked around the local grade school and they had some laying around that they didnt want anymore. So I think I might have gotten the better deal. Mine also came with the Pro Mouse and Keyboard and the original zip drive. But good find regardless.

 

[djkny]

A few months ago I posted a Want Ad on my company's buy/sell/swap bulletin board looking for used Mac's. Macs never were popular where I live, so I didn't really expect to get any replies. But a couple of weeks ago I got an email from a guy who said he had an old Mac in the basement and his wife was bugging him to get rid of it. He was going to put it in a yard sale this spring, but then he saw my want ad. He didn't know much about it, he just used it for games for his kids. So I went to see it and WOW! It's an absolutely pristine iMac G3 "Snow" model at 600Mhz with a 40GB drive and an Apple Pro keyboard and laser mouse! The best part -- he said I could have it for a hundred bucks! My conscience got the better of me and I told him it was worth "a lot" more than $100 but he just wanted it to go to a good home. So now it's mine, I've bumped the RAM to 640MB and installed Panther (up from 9.2.2) and it's working great! Runs just about everything! Still not sure exactly what I'm going to do with it, maybe set it up at my mother's house for when I visit.

I'm not really expecting any replies but I just wanted to brag about my old iMac "deal of the century!"

Not to take the wind out of your sails, but that was closer to a deal of the day. I got roughly the same config for my iMac off craigs for a cool $70.

 

[Trogloxene]

These old macs are such great deals. How much horsepower do your REALLY need?

-T

 

[volvoben]

Not to take away from your own good deal, but a local elementary school sold off their ~50 15" g4 imacs for $100 a piece a few years ago. Of course I didn't hear about it until a teacher friend asked me if she got ripped off. She suuuuuuuuure didn't. One of my colleges sold off their DA 733 powermacs for $150-200 with 512-1gb ram when they got G5s about 4 years ago...unfortunately I was too poor even at that price.

These used machines are surely great for many users who won't become enraged when it takes 20 seconds to open a browser and don't do much work with 2d or 3d graphics. A good percentage of computer users these days take digital photos, play games, work with family videos etc. though, and I definitely wouldn't suggest any of them bother with pre-G5/intel.

 

[California]

Yeah, but the snow models are very cool looking for the G3iMacs. He paid about what I did for one recently.

 

[AaronICT]

I won an iMac G3 600MHz off of eBay from a computer shot less than 30 miles from where I live. We took an afternoon to go and pick it up; I was getting it for my kids. The shop was a PC repair shop and the guy I bought it from hated Macs, didn't understand why I would want such a "piece of crap," etc. etc...

Anyway, I paid $60 for it and saw he had several more and asked if those were headed to eBay. He said yeah, and I offered him the same $60 for each of them on the spot. I left with 10 iMac G3s that day.

Now why would I do such a thing? Because while I was there I opened up a few of the access panels and saw that all were configured the same -- he said they all came from the same school, so that made sense. All of them had 512MB of RAM and an Airport Express card.

The Airport cards sell for $100+ on eBay alone, so I was pretty happy that day.

 

[SkyBell]

C'mon guys, quit raining on his parade, it was a very good deal indeed (Considering I paid $120 for a 233 MHz iMac G3 with 2 GB HD and 32 MB RAM)

 

[pseoudynman]

AWESOME find. You gotta love that deal!! My ex picked up my Blue and White PowerMac G3 450 and a matching B&W 22" (20"?) Studio Monitor two years ago for $150 at a GoodWill store. She knew I wanted a Mac, and she became a "Mac Addict", too. Its in storage right now, and I'm driving 7 hours to pick it up next weekend. It runs everything I need it to, but I can't wait to upgrade it / load it up. For another $700-ish I should be able to get it up to a G4 1ghz. I'm not replacing it, since it was my "first Mac"", but will likely buy a new Macbook, too.

 

[brop52]

C'mon guys, quit raining on his parade, it was a very good deal indeed (Considering I paid $120 for a 233 MHz iMac G3 with 2 GB HD and 32 MB RAM)

G3s are fine in Tiger. Can't run new games, but that's about it. For people needing to still use classic for various programs and even photoshop is fine on it. It requires more RAM to run at a decent speed, but that's not that expensive. It works perfectly fine for most things.

 

[aquajet]

Yes, you can find plenty of G3 iMacs on ebay for a song, but how many of these are "pristine"? Most of those are sold by surplus outlets, where "good condition" means "it turns on".

Every now and again it's possible to find something special, such as the OP's "pristine" example or my recently acquired blue dalmation.

Have fun with it eRondeau.