iMac question....

[mingle]

Hi,

I have the chance to get hold of an older iMac (600MHz/256MB/40GB/CD-RW). I've never been a Mac person (I don't like their "style over substance" attitude and rigid OS), however, I thought I'd try this one out.

But since it's a 2001-era machine, if it still useful today?

What version of the OS can I used and are freeware/shareware apps easy to get hold of?

Cheers,

Mike.

[sdyates]

I have purchased three Macs over the past 1.5 years. Before I answer your question, let me give you some info that might help.

The new intel Macs while having a lot of style, are certainly not at the expense of substance. Since I have been using these machines full-time, I have returned to the days when I enjoyed computers, like when I had my A3000.

They don't error like Wintel, they are fast today as when I bought it. They come with lots of built in technology. If you like to service the machine yourself, I can understand that being a pain -- but I have only needed to upgrade ram -- there is nothing else I needed.

Your 2001 machine is old and not very fast. I would post an article in the apple.com discussion boards as there are a lot of experts there than can help you get the best out of your older mac -- from my experience, they are slow and not something I would want to have around.

I hope this helps.

[da9000]

I would run Panther (10.3.9) or Tiger (10.4.x) (neither of which is "rigid", but much more malleable than most think) on that machine, but I would up the memory to 1GB. Anything less than 512MB and it will slow down when running multiple apps. You will be able to watch DivX movies at 600Mhz, but only with a very fast player (MPlayer, VLC), not with QuickTime. DVDs I'm not so sure about.

Good places for freeware/apps, other than Apple's own pages (they list non-Apple apps as well), are:

macupdate.com
versiontracker.com

Have fun!

[beller]

A 600 MHZ iMac will be dog slow for most applications.  For recommendations on what will run you might want to look at a website called LowEnd Mac

[SVPirate]

beller wrote:
A 600 MHZ iMac will be dog slow for most applications.

That depends what you run on it, and what versions. OS X up to 10.4 are all fine on a G3 of that speed, but non are earth shatteringly fast (10.4 is slightly faster than 10.3 in my experience but uses more RAM)Stuff like iTunes, Mail, Safari, and IM apps will run OK. Anything heavier will struggle though. You may get better productivity from it by using OS 9-era apps and running them through the 'classic' system in OS X, or trying to find very early (2001-03) era OS X native apps.

If you like OS X but find the machine slow then you can pick up a decent G4 Powermac for less than a lot these days

[Piru]

@sdyates

They don't error like Wintel

They sure don't.

"Error -69889"

[mingle]

Thanks for the comments and responses!

Without getting into a Mac vs PC vs Linux vs amiga debate, I'd have to say that WinXP Pro is the most stable OS I've ever used.

I do all sorts of stuff on my two PCs (IBM Thinkpad R51 & HP D530S) and I've yet to come close to foobarring XP, that's despite me being a bit of a registry hacker!

I've tried Linux and it's as bloated as XP, but even more obscure and difficult to work with behind the scenes.

When I was a daily Amiga user (now I'm WinUAE only) I tried out Mac OS (8.??) on Shapeshifter and was dismayed at the way it was so difficult to actually get to grips with the OS on a low-level.

The G3 iMac I'm looking at is only going to cost me around $AUD 50, which is a bargain. I'm planning on having a bit of a tinker with it, then pass it onto my parents as their first computer - they'll just be using it for email and web-browsing. Since the Mac is supposed to be a bit less virus and spyware prone than Windows, I thought it would be a safer bet for them.

Cheers,

Mike.

[Hiddenevil]

I'm inclined to agree with some of that is said here



My dad owned an imac DV400 G3 400, he has a reasonable amount of ram installed along with a 40gb hard drive. OSX 10.4.9 is installed and it runs like a dream. If you compare it to a wintel mac, yes it's going to be slower. But not everyone has the money to buy a new system. If you have the room, i'd recommend getting it. Max out the ram, install 10.3.9 and you'll be laughing. For surfing, email and other tasks they are great.


regards

[Gaiyan]

Having owned several iMacs in the past years I can say that the iMac in question is still quite useful today... as long as you up the RAM to at least 512MB and throw in Tiger. Granted, it won't play new games and can be dog slow with bigger applications but totally usable. It will make a fantastic machine for web and email expecially for the price you're getting it. But it's useless with the amount of RAM it has now. http://www.apple.com/downloads/ and versiontracker.com are good sites to get freeware stuff.

Joshua.

EDIT: With enough RAM, Tiger (10.4) actually runs better than Panther (10.3) even on a slower Mac. Another reason to get Tiger is that many, if not most new applications require Tiger.

EDIT2: "Since the Mac is supposed to be a bit less virus and spyware prone than Windows, I thought it would be a safer bet for them."

Mac OS X is *completely* virus and spyware free

EDIT3: Most of what I've said here appears to ahve been said already. I'm just re-inforcing the facts

[persia]

Umm rigid?  I think you'll find options for things on the Mac that you had npt even dreamed of, especially if you are comparing it to the Amiga.  There is a reason for the size difference you know.  Also the Mac terminal has far more power than the Amiga CLI.  Think of it this way, the Amiga is a catamaran whilst the Mac is an Ocean Liner.

Anyway, Tiger should work ok, but forget about Leopard and you probably can do Adobe CS3 only in geologic time, but some light small apps should run fine.

[scott2808]

I have returned to the days when I enjoyed computers, like when I had my A3000.

like sdyates - i switched to Mac (i switched 2-3 years back).

i confirm that you do indeed get the feel good factor back.
Mac OS is great and gives the user the option to go "easy to use" or "as complex as you like"

it's really that good. i have an Ibook g4 (1Ghz with 768Mb ram). it still runs brilliantly.

if you were to ask me - don't waste your cash on a 2nd hand system and go for a new MacBook. you'll not regret it, plus you can "boot camp" it for running windows.

[Jope]

Piru wrote:
@sdyates

They don't error like Wintel

They sure don't.

"Error -69889"

And how.. I started experiencing a lot of those since the upgrade to Leopard.

I even have the T-shirt

[tokyoracer]

My gripes on iMac's are as follows;
Slow, ugly, tedious, sod to upgrade, can be unreliable, cheaply built and were overpriced when new. To be honesest I think Apple spend too much on design then actually on decent hardware which seems a shame as the older Mac's were actually half decent, not to mention they were a respetable rival to Micro$oft.
Not to mention the cost of official simple software you'd expect it to come with.

[AmigaMac]

@mingle

I have an old iMac DV (400 MHz/512 MB) and it runs Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) just fine.  My only recommendation is that you turn off all the eye candy possible and maintain good tasking overhead.  It's a great machine for general purpose computing usage.

[SVPirate]

Oh, another word of sagely advice for G3 iMacs is get a nice low-noise fan and fit it under the 'handle' on the top to pull the hot air out from the unit, they are known to over heat in some circumstances, which in turn seems to damamge the analogue board (the high voltage PSU/CRT driver) and causes the machine to fail.