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what is the biggest hardware/upgrade jump you have ever experienced?

From the Dragon 32 (that I'd admittedly given up on years before) and a wordprocessing typewriter to my first Mac Performa that I got at University.

Wow - now rather than just being able to change things to bold and italic, I could change sizes and fonts and colours. I remember especially a demo landscape rendering program on the cover of Macformat which I was amazed by and, of course, Oscar the Grouch in the trash can. My little cousin would create empty folders and drag em to the trash all day.
 
Definitely my jump from my old Blueberry Clamshell iBook (300 MHz G3) to my 800 MHz last-generation G3 iBook. It's funny, because I used to use exclusively G3 processors, but I made the switch to all G4's in less than a month.

Daniel
 
603e with 96MB of RAM PowerTower Pro 225 MHz with a 2 GB SCSI hard disk running OS 8 (then 8.1.... then 8.5 and a quick hop to 8.6) to a:

800 MHz iMac G4 15" 60 GB hard disk and a Super Drive plus 768MB of RAM

I skipped the entire G3 series of processors. :D
 
I think that each of my Mac upgrades have been significant. Such as a PowerBook G3 to my current Power Mac Dual 450. Probably when I move to a G5 that will be my largest increase though.
 
Each of my upgrades gave me a noticeable jump in RAM, speed, and disk space, but none of them were anything like the software jump to Mac OS X, which was a major change in mindset and user experience. Ultimately, all that matters is what I'm doing with the Mac and how I'm doing it, not what's inside the box.

Of course, your thread is about hardware jumps, so for me it would be my switch at work from a Power Mac 8600 with 17" CRT to a Power Mac G5 with LCD monitor. Whoa!
 
Doctor Q said:
Each of my upgrades gave me a noticeable jump in RAM, speed, and disk space, but none of them were anything like the software jump to Mac OS X, which was a major change in mindset and user experience. Ultimately, all that matters is what I'm doing with the Mac and how I'm doing it, not what's inside the box.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with you on that. It never crossed my mind that OS X was my biggest upgrade, when in fact it really was. When I first got my Blueberry Clamshell, it had OS 9.0.4 installed. Using only OS 9 as my main system, I actually didn't like using a Mac. It wasn't until I installed OS X that my view of Apple computers completely changed. Now I am a Mac addict for life.

Daniel
 
before january 2005 - 733mhz pentium 3, 384mb ram (originally 128mb), 60gb hd, windows xp (originally windows me), cdrw and dvd drives, dial-up internet, and a big ol' tower & crt monitor.

after january 2005 - 1.8mhz g5, 512mb ram, 250 gb hd, osx, superdrive, high-speed cable internet and a sweet 17" lcd that just happens to have the rest of the computer built right in!

I felt like I dove head-first into the 21st century! it was awesome baby, with a capital A (ala dickie v)!

another big hardware upgrade was when I upgraded my discman for my first ipod (2nd gen 20gb) a few years ago...
 
m-dogg said:
another big hardware upgrade was when I upgraded my discman for my first ipod (2nd gen 20gb) a few years ago...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can make a case for that too, when I upgraded from the original RCA Lyra to my 3G 15 GB iPod.

Daniel
 
Atari 1040ST (with a 30MB HD, that is MB, not GB)
Atari TT
Power Macintosh 7100 (80MHz, 68k emulation, and a CD burner!)
Performa 8200 (200MHz, that was a downgrade, but I needed a PCI slot)
Power Macintosh G3 (266MHz)
Clamshell iBook (300MHz)
iBook dual USB (500MHz)
iBook dual USB (600MHz)
Power Macintosh G4 Quicksilver (733MHz)
Power Macintosh G4 Quicksilver (2x800MHz, Rock'n'Roll)
Powerbook G4 12" Rev. A (867MHz)
Power Macintosh G5 (2x1,8GHz, the Beauty)
Powerbook G4 12" Rev. C (1,33MHz)

The biggest step up? Performancewise, going from the beige G3 to the Quicksilver. In terms of "AAAh-Factor", going from the Atari TT to a computer for grown-up people.

And, I owned a CD burner, in 1994!! Hehe!
 
mpw said:
I went from a massive tower desktop 15” CRT Pentium 120mhz/16MB RAM/1GBM HD/MS Win95 to a 12” iBook G3 700Mhz/384MB RAM/30GB HD/OSX10.2 and then on to a 17” iMac G5 1.8Ghz/1GB Ram/80GB HD/OSX 10.3.8
Click to expand...

I did something similar, going from a Pentium 100MHz to a 12" 700MHz G3 iBook. Before the Pentium I had some sort of 386 with a turbo button on the front, running Win 3.1 and some hack program that allowed graphical web browsing even though I only had a shell account with my ISP (PPP cost more than shell accounts).

Since then my upgrades have been very incremental but I'm currently running a dual G5 with 2GB RAM. :)
 
In terms of Mac - a 33Mhz OS 7.0 or 7.1 Mac with 8MB of RAM, to a Powerbook G3 233Mhz Jaguar.
In terms of a PC - a 350MHz AMD K6-2 w/3d Now! to a 1.10GHz AMD Duron, windows 98 to XP.

That is in terms of ownership. In terms of usage -
No Mac to a PowerMac G4 733MHz in my Graphics design class.
 
From This:

Photo00106.jpg


To This:

Photo00094.jpg



Started with a Power Center Pro 240 (clone), 604e (G2 for comparison), 64MB ram, floppy, 400MB hard drive. I was in heaven. Later added USB, 512 ram, 2GB hard drive, CD, and an XLR8 400 MHz G3 card. I was in HIGH heaven. Went from here to a Dual 2.0 G5 with 250 GB drive, 1.5 GB ram, superdirve and 17" Studio Display. Can you say Nirvana? :D
 
Well, because of my computer buying habits everything tends to be a pretty big jump for me.

Definitely the biggest was:

Apple //c to Pentium 90, 500MB HDD & 16MB RAM (I had been using the Apple as a dumb terminal into the university sparc's)

The rest really didn't have the same impact:

Replaced P90 with a PII-450, added an additional 3.2GB HDD & 256MB RAM
Replaced PII-450 with my AL PB (1.25 GHz, 1.25GB RAM, 100GB HDD)

With my replacement habits, I expect to be replacing this with a 12GHz G6 :)
 
Veldek said:
That's been my jump from an iMac G3 400 MHz to the PowerMac DP 2.5 GHz I have now.
Click to expand...

Damn, have me beat.

Powerbook G4 400MHz -> PowerMac G5 dual 2GHz

If measured in frequency gain alone, the Powermac is 10x faster.
 
Biggest jump for me was probably going from a base-model Centris 610 (System 7, 20MHz LC040, 8MB RAM, 250MB HD, 14" Apple Monitor) to a PowerMac 6500 with an XClaimVR 3D/video digitizing graphics card (OS 8, 250MHz 603e, 48MB RAM, 4GB HD, 17" Trinitron + 14" Apple).

Coming in a very close second was the trasition between the same 6500 (upgraded with a CD-RW, 8GB HD, and OS9) and a then top-of-the-line PowerMac G4 DP533 with extras (OSX 10.0, DP533 G4, 640MB RAM, 40GB + 80GB HDs, 19" CRT).

Though the latter computer wasn't proportionally as big of a jump, it was a much more jarring transition since I got it within a couple weeks of the original release of 10.0 and I decided to go all OSX from the day of that Saturday FedEx delivery. I'd tried the Public Beta, but that was really disorienting for the first few weeks. It was also the first computer I wasn't sharing with my parents, which was a plesant change.

Replacing that with a decked-out G5 was nice (again, and at exactly the same time as the upgrade from 10.2 to 10.3), but didn't feel like nearly as big of a jump.
 
Something similar has already been posted, but I went from a IBM electronic typewriter to a Main Frame terminal, now that was computing. For Personal use the biggest jump was my G4 500 MHz Ti to a DP 2.5 G5. Benchmarks as follows, 58 for the Ti to 258 was the highest the G5 marked, almost 5 times the speed, but really it only seems about twice as fast.

Brian
 
m-dogg said:
I felt like I dove head-first into the 21st century! it was awesome baby, with a capital A (ala dickie v)!
Click to expand...

Anyone else think that is ironic? Bold is mine BTW.

Rod RodBefore the Pentium I had some sort of 386 with a turbo button on the front[/QUOTE said:
The turbo button made certain processor-clock dependent programs run correctly on newer hardware. Press the button and it slowed down to allow older programs to run.
Click to expand...
 
Apple IIgs (with the GUI and everything ;))
to
LC520 (25MHz 68030, HD that could probably be backed up to a single CD)
to
lime iMac G3 (333MHz G3)
to (smallest jump)
400MHz Beige G3, various things upgraded over time
to (current)
1.25GHz 15" PBG4

The jump from 68k -> PowerPC (in the form of a G3) was fairly large. I can't really recall what the IIgs -> real Mac switch was like, as I was only 8 years old at the time. I think the G3 -> G4 jump was the most noticeable though, simply because I could finally run some stuff that I had been drooling over for a while. I could also play current games! :D
 
From an Apple //e with dual floppy drive to a 486/66. "Wait, so the boot disk is already IN the computer!? Cool!"
 
I went from a

Grandstan 2000 (or what ever it is)
ZX spectrum
ZX sprectrum 128
Commadore Amiga
486 DX266
Pentium 90
pentium 200
*big jump*
G4 Dual 500
G4 Ti 1GHz

And today I got a Giga design Dual G4 1.25 rated @1.4 :D

Still holding out for a G5. Not sure yet. Dunno if I like them. There doesnt seem to be enough room inside the Tower. I have 4x120Gb in my Tower. Plus USB2 and extra firewire cards. But for the time being the Dual 1.25 chip will do.
 
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