Picked up a old iBook G3 what OS?

[Surfheart]

I saved an old 12" iBook G3 from work that was destined for the rubbish bin.
It has a 10Gb Drive, 500Mhz G3 and 384Mb of ram.

It was running 10.1 so I promptly updated to 10.2.8.
Would anyone recommend going higher to 10.3 or Tiger? I was tempted to leave it at 10.2 because I'm not really a fan of the brushed metal look of the finder in 10.3 and 10.4, but I think I hate the pin striping more! (what was apple thinking with that?)

Obviously performance is important, do the newer versions of the OS run better on these old machines?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Nova77]

I saved an old 12" iBook G3 from work that was destined for the rubbish bin.
It has a 10Gb Drive, 500Mhz G3 and 384Mb of ram.

It was running 10.1 so I promptly updated to 10.2.8.
Would anyone recommend going higher to 10.3 or Tiger? I was tempted to leave it at 10.2 because I'm not really a fan of the brushed metal look of the finder in 10.3 and 10.4, but I think I hate the pin striping more! (what was apple thinking with that?)

Obviously performance is important, do the newer versions of the OS run better on these old machines?

Thanks for any advice.

Everybody will tell you to get 10.3.

I would tell you to go with OS 9 for nostalgia's sake, since the machine is totally outdated.

You can use Tiger if you add RAM.

 

[MrCheeto]

Put Tiger on there and use it.

Tiger won't slow it down. In fact, it's probably the best OS you could put on that thing.

Download some word processors and games and enjoy the hell out of it!!

Visit Macintoshgarden.org for loads of free software!

 

[tom vilsack]

i can speak from experience....

i have basically all version of osx,and have a few old imacs...

tiger period! even with same amount of ram it runs faster then panther...

ps: try turning off spotlight and dashboard (if need commands ill post)

ps:your mac will use pc100 and have two slots for max 1 gig total...it's pretty easy to add ram and cheap on cl and worth the effort...

 

[zen.state]

Tiger. It can exist pretty well on 384MB. Just keep multi-tasking down and it'll perform great.

 

[Surfheart]

Thanks for the tips. I loaded up Tiger last night and it runs great! Much better than 10.2 and a much more fully featured OS too.

 

[MrCheeto]

Not only that, but you should be able to make use of it now.

Download some word processors (you can get the old Apple Works from MacintoshGarden.org) and the latest Safari you can run.

To view online videos, you can install a flash blocker and choose to view in Quicktime. For Youtube you can put m.youtube.com. The m will make it mobile and thus playable.

Enjoy... I know I would if I still had any of mine :'( Saying goodbye is never easy...

 

[zen.state]

For your browser I would give the G3 optimized Camino a try. It's the current modern version also and not a couple years old like the last Safari (ver 4) to run on Tiger.

Let me know how it performs as I have never tried the G3 build because I no longer own any G3's. http://www.rpm-mozilla.org.uk/builds/camino/

 

[max¥¥]

Put tiger on it, i have the exact same comp, same ram & model, just i have a dvd drive and a 60gb hdd and tiger really flies on the thing and it is a really useable comp

 

[ljonesj]

? can you add a usb expansion card on it as i am not familar with that model i just got back into macs in late 09 after leaving elementary school in the early 90s that had apple II going to ibm machines at the time

 

[zen.state]

? can you add a usb expansion card on it as i am not familar with that model i just got back into macs in late 09 after leaving elementary school in the early 90s that had apple II going to ibm machines at the time

An iBook is a laptop so it can't take expansion cards. They only way to expand the USB's ability would be to add a hub but all that does is give you more ports.

You need a Mac tower to use expansion cards like PCI etc.

 

[Paulywauly]

Try TenFourFox for your browser, its optimised for G3 chips and hasn't been out long.

I agree with what most have already said, Tiger was defiantly the better choice. You'll notice some performance improvement if you also disable the dashboard and spotlight

 

[ljonesj]

lol i am asking does it have the slot pcimcia which is the laptop expansion card slot used before express card and i think there is one even before the pcimcia slot

 

[SuperJudge]

lol i am asking does it have the slot pcimcia which is the laptop expansion card slot used before express card and i think there is one even before the pcimcia slot

Setting aside the original Airport slot, unfortunately, no iBook ever had a PCMCIA expansion slot. Those were limited to the "pro level" PowerBooks.

 

[zen.state]

lol i am asking does it have the slot pcimcia which is the laptop expansion card slot used before express card and i think there is one even before the pcimcia slot

I totally forgot about PCMCIA. My mistake. My MacBook is the first laptop I have owned since the late 90's when I had a PowerBook 540c. As SuperJudge mentioned they do not other than for AP.

 

[In-Correct]

excellent specs for 9.2.2

excellent specs for 9.2.2
9.2.2 has aftermarket 3rd party software. and also plenty of "old" apps.
g3 has as much support as 9.2.2
browser = classilla.

mac os x?
they are Correct.
get X.4.11 Tiger ... most supported by everything (by iPods...for example)
browser = TenFourFoxG3

BOTH os I STRONGLY recommend ram upgrade...especially because of memory-hogging websites.

I am going to research the "flash blocker...quicktime plugin...youtube mobile" thing. I would love to try that!!

 

[MAC MAN JW]

I saved an old 12" iBook G3 from work that was destined for the rubbish bin.
It has a 10Gb Drive, 500Mhz G3 and 384Mb of ram.

It was running 10.1 so I promptly updated to 10.2.8.
Would anyone recommend going higher to 10.3 or Tiger? I was tempted to leave it at 10.2 because I'm not really a fan of the brushed metal look of the finder in 10.3 and 10.4, but I think I hate the pin striping more! (what was apple thinking with that?)

Obviously performance is important, do the newer versions of the OS run better on these old machines?

Thanks for any advice.

OS X 10.4 Tiger all the way!! just upgrade your ram and if you want get a bigger/faster hard drive. i run tiger on my B&W G3 450MHz Tower with 1Gb ram and it moves very fast for a 11 year old mac and yours is even faster just not as mouch ram.