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What can my G3 do?

MacMosher

MacMosher

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 5, 2006
277
0
Canada
Hi,

I've recently bought a G3 900mhz ibook, 640 RAM, 40GB HD. I got it off ebay for $430(good deal?). Just wonder what the capabilities of this machine are.

This will be my first mac (besides the Mac Plus I had when I wasa youngin' :p ), I bought it for the portability, I already have a desktop. Needed somthing to bring around with me, class, notes, music, programming (MATLAB).

Just wondering what are some of the things that will run slowly or will everything be alright?

Thanks.
 
Since you have a G3 don't expect fast iTunes encoding and video work. Still, you have the maximum amount of RAM for that machine. You shouldn't notice any slow down just taking notes, browsing, and playing some tunes at the same time.

If you have 10.4 then watch out for how many widget you have open. They eat up a lot of RAM.
 
Eidorian said:
...
If you have 10.4 then watch out for how many widget you have open. They eat up a lot of RAM.
Click to expand...

I do have 10.4 so, what would be the max widgets I should have without slowing down my system dramatically? or is just one of those things ill figure out what my own limit is:p
 
MacMosher said:
I do have 10.4 so, what would be the max widgets I should have without slowing down my system dramatically? or is just one of those things ill figure out what my own limit is:p
Click to expand...

You can check how much actual memory a widget is using in your activity monitor. The activity monitor is found inside Applications/Utilities.
 
MacMosher said:
Hi,

I've recently bought a G3 900mhz ibook, 640 RAM, 40GB HD. I got it off ebay for $430(good deal?). Just wonder what the capabilities of this machine are.

This will be my first mac (besides the Mac Plus I had when I wasa youngin' :p ), I bought it for the portability, I already have a desktop. Needed somthing to bring around with me, class, notes, music, programming (MATLAB).

Just wondering what are some of the things that will run slowly or will everything be alright?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

That's a good price. If it included an airport card I would say you did very well. The G3 ibooks are still a very capable machines. As for what you want it for it sounds like enough to me. I can't speak to how it will handle your programming needs but if by music you mean Itunes it's more then enough. It won't rip a CD with lightning speed but it will do it within a reasonable amount of time. If your interested in recording you own stuff it's going to be pokey. Congratulations of your purchase!
 
It will run MATLAB, but you might want to take a coffee break on start-up. On the iBook 800MHz G3 I had earlier this year, MATLAB ran well once it started up, or, more precisely, is was bearable. But starting up that program is a chore. To facilitate the productivity of MATLAB, go ahead and close everything else prior to opening the application.

When I use MATLAB on the G5s here at school, there is about a 20-25 second wait for start-up, these are 1.8GHz iMac G5s with 1GB of RAM. My PowerBook (1.5GHz G4 with 768MB RAM) starts in about 40-45 seconds.

As a suggestion with the widgets, my past iBook really bogged down when I added more widgets. 640MB of RAM is workable for any application as long as you don't throw unnecessary widgets onto the dashboard.

And another thing, for MATLAB to work, you must install X11 which is included on the Tiger Installation DVD (but is not automatically installed with automatic upgrading). Enjoy!
 
MacHarne said:
It will run MATLAB, but you might want to take a coffee break on start-up. On the iBook 800MHz G3 I had earlier this year, MATLAB ran well once it started up, or, more precisely, is was bearable. But starting up that program is a chore. To facilitate the productivity of MATLAB, go ahead and close everything else prior to opening the application.

When I use MATLAB on the G5s here at school, there is about a 20-25 second wait for start-up, these are 1.8GHz iMac G5s with 1GB of RAM. My PowerBook (1.5GHz G4 with 768MB RAM) starts in about 40-45 seconds.

As a suggestion with the widgets, my past iBook really bogged down when I added more widgets. 640MB of RAM is workable for any application as long as you don't throw unnecessary widgets onto the dashboard.

And another thing, for MATLAB to work, you must install X11 which is included on the Tiger Installation DVD (but is not automatically installed with automatic upgrading). Enjoy!
Click to expand...

Thanks alot. Yeah MATLAB is a very big program it takes about 30 seconds to open on my pc.

Do I need a special version of MATLAB for mac? or is the regular one compatabile?
 
MacMosher said:
Thanks alot. Yeah MATLAB is a very big program it takes about 30 seconds to open on my pc.

Do I need a special version of MATLAB for mac? or is the regular one compatabile?
Click to expand...
Sadly, I think it's a separate version. They just port the UNIX version and run it through X11 on OS X. It was a pain to install too. At least from our campus license.
 
matlab

If you are a student, you can get a fairly cheap version of Matlab for the mac. It starts up very quick if you are running in X; it's starting from Aqua that's slow becuase it also sets up the whole matlab environment. On my powerbook G4 it takes 6 seconds to start up from X (using command matlab -nojvm).
 
I recently pulled out my old 500 MHz G3 iBook and was pleasantly surprised how usable it is. It makes copious use of swap since it only has 384MB of RAM, and I wouldn't want it to be my primary system, but for browsing and simple things it's functional even with Tiger.

Of course, it was horrendous right after the install while Spotlight was making the hard drive go ballistic indexing. :)
 
mattnewman said:
If you are a student, you can get a fairly cheap version of Matlab for the mac. It starts up very quick if you are running in X; it's starting from Aqua that's slow becuase it also sets up the whole matlab environment. On my powerbook G4 it takes 6 seconds to start up from X (using command matlab -nojvm).
Click to expand...
Thats intense thanks for the info.

Where would I get the MATLAB program for macs from. I have access to the pc version at my campus book store but not mac (thats canada for ya :p, ive never even seen a apple store ahaha).
 
Wow! If I had seen that machine I might have snapped that up myself. Its a nice one , from my point of view. I use my 600mhz every day of the week for iTunes, browsing, email. The occasional Age of Empires game. It runs it quite well. I say a good buy!!
 
Arcus said:
Wow! If I had seen that machine I might have snapped that up myself. Its a nice one , from my point of view. I use my 600mhz every day of the week for iTunes, browsing, email. The occasional Age of Empires game. It runs it quite well. I say a good buy!!
Click to expand...
Thanks... well that is to say I havent actually "recieved" it yet its on its way. Im currently waiting on usps rediculously slow delivary and the person who sold it to me hasnt given me the tracking numbers yet... so Im kinda pissed cause I can't talk to usps without a tracking number/label number
 
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