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Thinking about a g3 ibook

C

CNU182

macrumors regular
Original poster
for a friend. saw one for sale locally for $200 with the following specs:

apple ibook g3
500mhz
OSX 10.3 Jaguar(discs included)
6 GB hD
386 mb/ram
apple airport card

i'd plan on upping the hard drive and ram, but as it stands is that a good deal?
 
That sounds like a good deal. However, I am confused at to which OS is included. You said 10.3 Jaguar, but that's incorrect. 10.2 is Jaguar. 10.3 is Panther.
 
A lot will also depend on the condition of the machine. I have a 500Mhz iBook, and you have to keep in mind that it's a 5-year old machine. The backlight to my screen no longer works, so I only use the laptop plugged in to an external monitor. I'm still using my original battery, and it will hold a charge without being plugged in for maybe 15-20 minutes (not an issue for me as the screen doesn't work).

Also confusing: the 500Mhz iBook came with a 10GB hard drive.

I wouldn't bother upgrading the RAM or the HD unless you can find parts very cheaply. What are you planning on using this for?
 
miloblithe said:
Also confusing: the 500Mhz iBook came with a 10GB hard drive.
Click to expand...

Yep...I was about to point out the same thing. I've got that model as well...my backlight works, but I only get about 10 minutes of battery power on it. That's fine with me, as it sits on an end table in my living room for surfing while watching TV. I don't need to go far with it, so I don't mind being tethered by a power cord.
 
It's a great little computer to be sure, but realistically at 5 years of age something is likely to go at some point. This computer wouldn't be likely to, say, survive several years of commuter use to a college campus.
 
I was considering getting a G3 ibook (the snow one) to have as a portable computer, but the fact that the logic board seems to fail on most G3 ibooks kinda turned me away from the idea. You should ask the seller if the logic board has been replaced, because the apple replacement program ended a year and a half ago, and while i have heard that you can still get apple to replace it for free, if they don't replace it, a new logic board will run you twice the cost of your laptop.
Just my 2 cents...
 
You'd be surprised how far a G3 iBook can still take you.

Being a junior in college right now I'm running 10.3.9 on a 600Mhz G3 iBook that I picked up for $350 about 2 years ago.

Contrary to what you might expect, I can write essays, listen to iTunes, chat, and waste time on the 'net just fine.

Consider what you're going to be using it for. if it's going to be your primary, be prepared to make do with just the bare minimum. If you just want to use it for the very basics while you use another computer for your entertainment, I couldn't think of a better idea at a better price.

My battery is 6 years old and I still get 3 hours of charge out of it consistently with full brightness and highest processor speed setting.
 
CNU182 said:
for a friend. saw one for sale locally for $200 with the following specs:

apple ibook g3
500mhz
OSX 10.3 Jaguar(discs included)
6 GB hD
386 mb/ram
apple airport card

i'd plan on upping the hard drive and ram, but as it stands is that a good deal?
Click to expand...

i don't think it's a bad deal. i bought the same one for my mom 2 years ago and paid $500. just 2 weeks ago i paid $150 to get an airport card as she was going on a trip.

so let's say you buy it you can sell it adn the airport card on ebay separately and still be ahead your 200.

btw, it runs tiger fine very well with 384mb of ram so if you up the hd to a 5400 rpm model and the ram to it's max (628 mb) i believe it will be great for safari, bittorrent, word, excel, chat (prob no video), itunes, iphoto, ical, and playing dvd's (if it has a dvd player defenitely it's a great buy. mine has a dvd and cd player, but no burning cd or dvd)
 
CNU182 said:
to my knowledge he just wants to get online, download music, and talk on aim.
Click to expand...

The G3 would work great. Just don't expect it to do anything more.

And max out the RAM.
 
FWIW, mine runs Tiger pretty darn well for similar tasks with just 384 MB of RAM.

And yes, the AirPort card alone is worth $100-$150, so this really is a good deal.
 
For what you said you intended to use it on, it'd be a great computer if you just make some modifications to the RAM, hard drive and maybe a new Airport card. A friend of mine bought a used iBook G3 as well and his original Airport card was very faulty (disconnecting randomly, wouldn't connect at all) so he replaced that.

Other than that, sounds like a great deal.
 
It's quite labour intensive to upgrade a hard drive in a G3 iBook. I would look into the cost of doing this first, if you're counting on having more disk space. But, if you're using it mostly for school work, and not putting too many videos or mp3s on it, 6 GB should be enough room to get work done.
 
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