My First Mac

With a 600 MHz iBook Running Circles Around a 2.8 GHz Celeron, It Was Time to Switch

- 2008.06.05

Being a long suffering Windows user, I finally gave into the peer pressure of my upwardly mobile friends who constantly urged me to go Mac.

Ever since 2001, when I was helping a friend with a short film (which he edited using Final Cut on a Sawtooth Power Mac running OS 9), I've thought they were beautiful machines, but I always succumbed to the thinking that Microsoft was king for a reason.

In March of 2007, I picked up a very used 600 MHz Dual USB iBook. Running Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) with only 128 MB RAM, it ran circles around my 2.8 GHz Celeron Toshiba Satellite on tasks like Photoshop and iTunes. I was hooked. Within several months, it developed the well known logic board problem.

MacBook

I sold the Toshiba and most of my collection of classic vinyl and purchased a 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook. It has since been upgraded to Leopard.

Within weeks, the low-end Macs came pouring in. I snagged an Indigo iMac G3 350 MHz at a SC State Surplus Sale for the princely sum of $50. It's now loaded with 512 MB of RAM, runs Tiger like a champ, and serves as a print server, iCal station for my wife and I to organize our schedules, as well as for Quicken, and is a nifty recipe organizer/iTunes station for the kitchen.

Power Mac G4 I also ended up with the previously mentioned Sawtooth for $100. My friend had upgraded to a G5 for editing and thought the G4 was useless. Upgraded to dual 450 MHz G4s and running Tiger, it now serves as my DVD ripping/burning station, video editing workstation, as well as functioning as a DVD player for the bedroom.

Three Macs, three distinct uses. Two of 'em saved from the landfill no less!

Thanks for doing a great job with this site! I don't think I'd be so addicted to repurposing the old stuff without the wealth of info found here. Now, if I can just find a Power Mac G3 All-in-One, I think my collection will be complete!

Share the story of your first Mac experience by emailing with "My First Mac" as your subject.

Join us on Facebook!, follow us on Twitter, use our Google+ page, or read our RSS news feed

Recent My First Mac articles

A Second Spring for PowerPC Macs, 2011.09.28. Apple has abandoned the Classic Mac OS, PowerPC Macs, and PowerPC software, but that doesn't have to mean an end for new development.
Flash, YouTube, and .docx File Conversion for Mac OS 9, 2011.04.05. Although Adobe and Microsoft dropped OS 9 support years ago, there are workarounds for viewing YouTube videos and using Word documents.
Thanks for the IBM PC, Dad, 2009.01.09. Dad, thanks for bringing home that first IBM PC way back in 1981.
More in the My First Mac index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Lisa, introduced 1983.01.19. The ancestor of the Macintosh had a mouse, a graphical interface, and a $10,000 price tag.
May 21 in LEM history: 99: Not censorship - 01: USB and FireWire drives - 02: Hooked by a PowerBook - Printer sharing for Mac OS X - 04: Less frequent OS X uprades: Good or bad? - 07: I won't get an iPhone this year - Can 262,144 colors be considered 'millions'? - Most durable 'Book - 3 GB in a Mac mini? - 08: Quadra a great server for vintage Mac network
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Go to the My First Mac index.

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2012 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Low End Mac, LowEndMac, and lowendmac.com are trademarks of Cobweb Publishing Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.

Custom Search

Follow Low End Mac on Twitter
Join Low End Mac on Facebook

Low End Mac Reader Specials

Macsales.com for the Right Mac Memory. Most Popular: 16GB from $128; 8GB from $50. MacBook Pro & Mac mini Kits up to 16GB. iMac up to 32GB & Mac Pro now up to 128GB. - Macsales.com

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Macpokeronline.com will show you how to download and play Poker on a Mac natively on your Mac in just minutes.

Affiliates

Amazon.com
The iTunes Store
PC Connection Express
Parallels Desktop for Mac
eBay