Worth $35?

[mechmike0034]

http://bham.craigslist.org/sys/119029974.html

I know nothing of Macs, but I am willing to learn... Might also put simple games on it for my granddaughter.

Not looking for the latest and greatest, just a learning experience for me and a starter computer for her. The all-in-one thing is appealing, as is the cheap price.

Whaddya think? Google turns up a bunch of stuff that's been helpful. It takes SODIMMS, so upgrading the memory a little won't be expensive.

Mac folks, what say you? I don't think it'd be a bad move for $35, even if it is a less-than-modern computer.

[Raider007]

for $35 it's up to you...
although OS 9 is pretty much dead, it's like teaching someone how to use a windows computer based off Windows 3.11...i wouldn't spend it...plus those old computers are horribly slow...you're pretty much now 3 chip generations old...(basically you're buying a $35 486 66 mhz computer with windows 3.11 for comparison)

[AlpineJay]

I recall those machines being painfully slow even in their own time. I wouldn't waste it either - also Raider makes a good point about OS9 effectively being dead.

[zero2dash]

There's not much you can do in terms of upgrading...I think you'll be stuck with the base processor and motherboard, and if the display goes out then you're really not going to be happy.

OS9 - you won't find much that supports it anymore. Nothing modern at least. You might be able to get an older version of Netscape or Mozilla for OS9 but that's about it.

I'd pass. If it was a mid to high end G4 and it was maybe $50 or $75, I'd do it but that's about as low as I'd go on old Mac hardware. (At least with the G4, you can use OSX if you have enough memory and the cpu isn't *too* old.)

[seqiro]

Not that this thread is probably very relevant anymore, but for $35 I would have gone for it. Even an original iMac like that can run OS X 10.3 just fine. Yeah, it's not going to be the fastest on the planet, but we ran ours with 10.2 until we sold it and my wife's original iBook which is not much faster currently runs 10.3.

But it definitely does NOT require a G4 to run OS X. You won't get all of the eye candy like Expose but you will get a solid machine to do basic functions like e-mail, internet, and word processing. Heck, you can even dual boot Linux if you're bored.

[seqiro]

for $35 it's up to you...
although OS 9 is pretty much dead, it's like teaching someone how to use a windows computer based off Windows 3.11...i wouldn't spend it...plus those old computers are horribly slow...you're pretty much now 3 chip generations old...(basically you're buying a $35 486 66 mhz computer with windows 3.11 for comparison)

A G3 333 would be nothing at all comparable to 486-66, it would smoke the living daylights out of it.

For a better comparison, I acquired an IBM ThinkPad with a Celeron 566 and 192MB RAM, and that thing choked heavily on Windows XP. It ran, but it was pathetic. I eventually backed it off to Windows 98 which ran much better.

[Jenny]

Dude. That's right by my grandparents.

[zero2dash]

A G3 333 would be nothing at all comparable to 486-66, it would smoke the living daylights out of it.

For a better comparison, I acquired an IBM ThinkPad with a Celeron 566 and 192MB RAM, and that thing choked heavily on Windows XP. It ran, but it was pathetic. I eventually backed it off to Windows 98 which ran much better.

XP will choke a computer running with 256 megs of ram; I've seen a G4 PowerMac choke on OSX 10.2 with 512 megs of ram.

In the PC realm, I wouldn't run XP on anything but 512 megs of ram or less and a high end Pentium 3 (866 or greater); OSX I wouldn't run on anything but a mid to high end G4 with at least 512 megs of ram (and that's pushing it). Anything weaker/older than that - I'd run Win2k on the PC side and OS9.1 on the Mac side (or a Linux flavor if you want, but you're still going to have slow speed).

At my job we've got XP Home sp2 running on a 1.8 Celeron with 256 megs of ram and I can just tell the computer is seriously lagging; by the same token when I originally started we had Panther (OSX 10.39) running on 256 megs of ram in the 1.8g G5 we have and it was drop dead slow. Now that we've upgraded with an additional gig of ram...it's much more tolerable for me.

You can run OSX on a G3, but why in the hell would you want to? That's like running XP on a Pentium 166 with 64 megs of ram (which I believe is the minimum mentioned by the system requirements)...

[seqiro]

Clearly my experience has been different than yours, because I run OS X on machines WAY slower than G5 1.8s and with less than 256MB and they are plenty usable.

Not my MAIN machine (a PowerBook G4 1.33 with 2GB RAM) mind you, but they still do the trick for basic functions. I'd still recommend buying a $35 old Mac and throw some RAM in and mess around with it--if only to see if he'd ever WANT to drop a few grand on Quad G5 with 16GB RAM.

[zero2dash]

...add in the 30" display and forget about mortage payments for a year.
I really like Apple hardware now...but for the love of god they charge way too much for it.
I wouldn't say older Macs are unusable under OSX with low system specs...but I will say that I'm impatient enough not to do it. I hate waiting for things to looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo........oooooooooad.

[johnnymk]

I have 256 MB of RAM in my Toshiba laptop with a 1.5 GHz Celeron running XP. It came that way from the factory. No problems whatsoever.