Korin Hasegawa-John
- 2001.09.12
Q: After reading your article on
beige G3s, I was wondering what you think these
computers are good for?
A: It depends on what you are doing or trying to do with your
hardware.
People who should look at beige
G3s:
They are definitely great for students, since they are
inexpensive, expandable, and reasonably fast out of the box.
However, a major detriment to student usage of these computers is
their lack of hardware 3D acceleration. They do have ATI Rage IIc
or Rage Pro acceleration, but these chips are slow and equipped
with an anemic 2 MB VRAM or 6 MB VRAM, which isn't enough
to produce good textures in games such as Unreal or Quake II.
Unreal Tournament, Quake III, Oni, and Deus Ex look downright
ugly.
If you use productivity apps such as FileMaker
Pro,
ClarisWorks/AppleWorks, or Office 98 or 2001, a Beige G3 running
9.1 with 192 MB RAM will be a perfectly good computer for you. The
total cost might come to about $500 or so including a decent 17"
monitor.
The beige G3 is also a good choice for those who are
relatively new to the Mac. The speed is very impressive
running 8.6 or 9.1 with enough RAM, and, while they make nothing
like the statement of the iMac, they have a nice, pleasing
industrial design. They are also cheap and relatively upgradable
and expandable.
People who should not invest in a beige G3:
Graphics artists would do well to give the beige G3
series a pass, unless it is one of the high-end minitowers. The
low-end beige G3s shipped with painfully slow EIDE hard drives and
did not have enough drive bays. The high end minitowers sometimes
shipped with an 8 GB 80 MB/s Ultra Wide SCSI array, which
provides excellent throughput rivaling today's ATA/66 systems. The
minitowers also provide two full size external drive bays. However,
these high-end systems still command a fairly high price on the
used market.
Gamers should also avoid the beige G3s. They require too
much money for upgrades before they become good gaming boxes, and
they are hobbled by the slower 66 MHz bus - and they don't include
AGP slots or fast PCI slots.
Crazy people like me who like sticking anything and everything
possible in their Macs should pass on this computer. I personally
get some sort of strange kick from putting over 3/4 of a gigabyte
of RAM in my Mac and filling all the available slots and bays with
SCSI cards, USB, FireWire, video cards, audio cards, hard drives,
CD-RW, and everything else. If that description fits you, you
certainly should give the beige G3 a pass, because it only has
three RAM slots, one 3.5" internal and one 3.5" external drive bay,
and three PCI slots. That's not nearly enough compared to the 12
RAM slots, two 5.25" external drive bays, six PCI slots, and a
daughtercard slot on the 9600.
Related Links
Editor's note: In recent months, the beige G3 has become the
most popular Mac profile on our site.
Recent sales on eBay typically close at under US$250 for a
basic beige G3.
