[muglo] Re: OS X running on mac clone
- From: "Eric D." <hideme666@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <muglo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 20:49:23 -0500
on 25/2/03 6:16 PM, Alex at admeddemda@xxxxxx wrote:
> For anyone considering getting rid of an older mac just bc they want
> to use OSX, my experience is that the older macs can run X just as
> nicely as any stock G3. I wouldn't go as far as to say they're as
> good as a new G4. But I'd much rather spend ~$400 (what it cost me to
> buy the tower clone, 320megs RAM, 3 hard drives [two 4 gigs and one 9
> gig], internal cdrw, 2 video cards, usb card and the G3/500 XLR8
> processor) on an older upgraded machine than drop $3000 plus on a new
> G4. But of course Apple doesn't want you to know this... they want
> your $3000 plus!
I agree that a PCI Mac can be upgraded to OS X with some satisfactory
success, however, I'd suggest that if you want to run OS X as your primary
OS, that you get at least a Beige G3/233 and use it as your start point.
Even better, get a bottom-of-the-line B&W G3/300 or /350 and upgrade it with
the G3/500 CPU. They're a touch more expensive than the PCI clone, but they
have a huge advantage in that Apple actively supports them, and, the B&W
uses IDE on its internal HD and CD-ROM bus so you have Apple-supported
access (i.e. no IDE card required/ROM boot support) to cheap IDE HDs (& they
are *much* cheaper than their SCSI counterparts) and CD-RWs.
That said, you probably paid $200-500 less than you would've had you done
the same to a bottom-of-the-line B&W or a Beige G3. Congrats!!!
PS I'm running a PowerBook G3/400 now and it's the little PowerBook that
could. It's replaced my B&W/450 at a net cost of only ~$400 for a larger,
faster (and MUCH quieter) HD, 64 MB less RAM (512 MB now :( and 50 MHz less
CPU MHz. The real difference is in the video though :( The B&W has the 16 MB
ATI RAGE 128 vs. the Pismo's 8 MB ATI RAGE 128 (mobile but in an AGP) and
that makes a noticeable difference in OS X. It doesn't render the Pismo
functionless in OS X but it does mean that it's not quite as smooth as the
B&W (e.g. magnifying the dock and moving the cursor up and down while other
apps are doing stuff is sometimes a little jumpy).
If anyone goes for a Pismo I can completely recommend it with OS X. OS X
*really* makes this puppy fly, and many of the bugs which were never fixed
in OS 9 have been addressed (it's one _SMOOTH_ OS... I think 10.2.5 will
herald the first release of OS X that brings OS X to virtual parity in terms
of polish with OS 9). In OS 9 it'll be about as zippy as you can get in an
OS 9 machine, but OS 9 really has limitations now that I've become a 99% OS
X user again. Internet flies in OS X -- browsing on dialup over a 28.8 Kbps
connection in OS X 10.2.4 (Safari or Chimera... IE OS X is sluggish by
comparison now) is faster on small or well designed pages than doing the
same in OS 9 on a LAN (with 1 MByte/s max, 277x faster in theory) on the
same machine!!! And, REAL multitasking and protected memory are such nice
features that I am loath to use OS 9 when I have to (I'm sure that'll change
when I go back to OS 9 to run Photoshop b/c OS 9 is a pretty slick OS in its
own right... it just doesn't have the bells and whistles that OS X offers).
The *only* caveats I have for running OS X on a laptop is that (a) you must
have a fast HD with lots of space (4 GB drive *absolute* minimum, 10 GB
recommended) and (b) you must have at LEAST 512 MB of RAM. 320 MB is enough
for light work (one or two apps at a time) but you'll find yourself hitting
virtual memory before long unless you have AT LEAST 512 MB of RAM. I would
recommend 768 or 1 GB if you can afford it, and if your Mac can support it.
It's bizarre but I'd up the RAM requirements on a laptop simply b/c of the
battery considerations -- a lot of battery power is consumed if your HD has
to thrash to deal with VM.
Anyway, I have work to do rather than procrastinate here.
Eric.
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