Old iMac Question

[mattroberts]

I just started helping out at our Student Newspaper here in Ottawa and we're using iMacs (yayy) sadly they're damn slow.

We have 5 Imac G3 (266mhz) all of which have only 32mb of ram. They're all running MacOS 8.6.

Checking our budget I think we can afford to buy 256mb for each box($40ish for each 256 card). Since they're only used for Word Processing and Web Surfing I'm hoping this will significantly bump up their speed.

My question is: Am i right? I have no experience with pre-OSx Macs and since there will be no new computers for the foreseeable future is this the best (cheap) way to extend their life span?

cheers
matt

 

[mymemory]

YES

At that price is a better deal for you to get the ram. I know the computers are "slow" compared with what is on the market "today" but back when they came out people were editing video on even slower systems and back then it was "fast".

You may upgrate to OS 9.2.2 later. I am typing right now in a Powerbook G3 500 and I still doing After Effects (video animation) in it because some plug-ins are not tehre any more for OSX.

For web and those things you are all set up. You may want to get new usb mouse as well because those "beans" are a nightmare. You can use almost any PC usb mouse.

Find out how to increase the ram assigned to the application. Go to the application, then, when clicking once go to FILE/ get Info and increase the memory used but the application. It may make it a bit faster but for sure you wont tell.

The good thing about the ram is that you can have more applications open at same time but you will have to learn how to manage the ram used by each because OS8 does not do it for you. Yoy can have 4GB of ram and everything wold work about the same.

Go to Crusial to but the ram for those machines.