Best Mac for Writing
Michael writes:
I am a writer. I work from home most of the time, and I need a new
computer. I would like a Mac, but I am finding it difficult to get
advice about which Apple computer would be best for my needs. As I make
my living from writing, it is essential that I make the right buy.
Ideally the computer must have a flat screen display. It must be
fast on the Internet, as I do a lot of research via the Web, and it
must be excellent for emails and word processing. This is all I will
use it for.
What do you think would be the best Mac for me?
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your reply.
Such an open-ended question!
Well, if you want a flat display, you've ruled out the old CRT iMacs as
well as using a conventional desktop with an older display. I lean
toward PowerBooks myself, as that gives me the option of taking my
entire computer with me. It also provides plenty of power during power
outages, which happen several times a year around here.
For basic word processing, ClarisWorks, AppleWorks, WordPerfect 3.5e,
and Microsoft
Word 5.1 are all wonderful word processors that will perform
admirably even on older hardware. There are also plenty of good email
clients for older Macs.
What defines your bottom end is a fast Internet experience. For that,
you really want a Mac with a PowerPC processor and something faster
than a dialup connection, such as DSL or a cable modem.
In laptops, I'd recommend nothing less than a PowerBook 1400. Watch out for the "Road Apple" 117 MHz version and be
sure you get enough memory when you buy it. The 1400 is a very nice
size, has a very usable 800 x 600 display, and provides adequate power
for a decent browsing experience. Generally US$200 and less on
eBay.
On the desktop side, your most affordable solution is probably a
G4 iMac. You can
probably pick up a refurbished on for US$1,100 that will provide all
the power you need.
Still, I can't tell you what computer's right for you. There are
writers who still use and love their old compact Macs and ancient
PowerBooks. I can point to a minimum level, but beyond that you'll need
to do your own research.
Browser for Banking on a 680x0
Mac
John Nistico asks:
I have a question: I purchased my wife a Performa 580 All-in-One for Christmas, and
it runs great. However, when she's on-line, she needs a browser that
her bank (Wells Fargo) will allow. Netscape 4.8 or IE 5.0 is
recommended as minimums, but they won't install.
Any ideas?
Both browsers require a PowerPC processor, which your Performa 580
doesn't have. If you can locate a PPC upgrade for the 580 (Apple Power Mac Processor Upgrade,
DayStar PowerCard 601, or Sonnet Presto PPC 605), you'll solve that
problem, but they're not common and tend to be overpriced.
Another alternative is to replace the computer. The Performa 5400 is faster, has a
multisync display, and will run modern browsers. They pretty
consistently close at around US$40 on
eBay, although shipping is extra. If you can find one locally for
anything close to that price, it's a worthwhile upgrade.
And now for the no cost solution: You might have some luck with the
680x0 version of iCab, the only
browser currently being developed for pre-PowerPC Macs. If that doesn't
work, try locating, downloading, and using Netscape 4.0.8 or IE
4.0.
Network Advice
After reading Networking 101, Dave
Schleeper writes:
I hope you don't mind me emailing you. I need some advise, and I saw
you article on the Internet on setting up a cable or DSL router.
My situation is this:
I have an existing network. 20 or so machines, all running Windows
2000 Pro connected to a server running Windows 2000 server. I put
together 3 new machines over the weekend. They are sitting in a room
that only has 1 available port in it. That port has an active
connection to the server.
I purchased a 4 port wired router (Siemens). I ran a cable from the
port in the office and plugged it into the UpLink port on the router. I
connect the 3 machines to 3 of the 4 ports. All 3 computers connect to
the Internet no problem. However, here is my problem....
None of them can access the network drives. If I run the cable
directly from the wall to 1 machine, I can map network drives, no
problem, but as soon as I connect the 3 to the router, none of them
connect. It says something about "already in use." I believe their own
traffic is knocking each other off.
I don't know if I'm suppose to set these machines up as their own
computer names or all the same computer names. Should they be
configured as part of a domain (the domain name that represents the
network) or should they be configured as a Workgroup.
In the end, I want all 3 to access the Internet and able to connect
to the network drives on the network.
Could you offer any advise on this? I would really appreciate
it.
Yes, you're doing something wrong here. Assuming your main network
isn't already connected to the Internet, your router should have one
WAN (or uplink) port to handle your outside connection and four
ports to connect your three new computers and your existing
network together.
If that's what you've got, your problem is probably a very simple one.
Replace the cable between your router and your current network with a
crossover cable. I suspect that will solve your problem
instantly.
A follow-up email from Schleeper thanked me for the advice, so it must
have worked.
Move2X
You wrote:
Macs have traditionally been very easy to migrate. You could pretty
much drag the contents of the old hard drive to the new drive or
computer and be ready to go, although sometimes you had to reinstall
the OS. I don't know if OS X is as friendly, but Carbon Copy
Cloner seems to make it very easy.
While that is true for migrating from one classic flavor of Mac OS
to another, and it may very well be true for OS X, it definitely
appears to be (at least) unclear for migrating from OS 8/9 -> X. I
think this is really keeping Apple from a real burst of sales. I'm
totally convinced that, after a reasonable adaptation period, OS X
is going to be something wonderful (though maybe not in the sense of
the ending of '2010').
But there's this huge hurdle of moving from an older Mac with (say)
8.1, multiple partitioned SCSI drives, etc., to a much newer Mac that
has an entirely different paradigm for storing files. (I'm not even
mentioning s/w upgrade issues, because there's always been such issues
w/ a change in OS.) If Apple wants to drive the transition to
OS X, why don't they take a tiny fraction of that $4 billion they
have "in the bank" and prepare a kit that consists of an ethernet
crossover cable, an AppleScript for the old 8.1-9.x machine that
publishes all attached mass storage, and software on the OS X
machine to suck everything over and be at least semi-intelligent in
putting it into a reasonable location.
And they could make it be only available from Apple Stores or the
online Apple Store, as a way of boosting traffic and encouraging sales
of various higher margin items.
Great idea - a version of Move2Mac for classic Mac users. This
would be especially helpful for those who have never migrated to any
version of Mac OS 9. The migration kit would have to make sure the
classic environment is installed on the new computer, collect all the
programs and put them into the Applications (Mac OS 9) folder, and
help users organize their documents.
More on Radeon 7000, Beige G3s, and OS
X
After reading Radeon 7000, a Beige G3,
and OS X, Simon Slaytor writes:
Fantastic web site; it's a major part of my daily web reading. I
notice in you 11/2/03 (I'm English) Mailbag you state that the Radeon
7000 will not work with a Beige G3, resulting in only a
black screen.
This statement is partly true and completely wrong at the same time.
Yes, powering on your Beige G3 with a monitor only connected to the
Radeon does result in an initial black screen. However, this is only
true for the kernel boot portion of the startup sequence, the grey
screen with Apple logo. Once OS X loads the ATI Radeon Video
driver, at the end of the grey boot sequence, the screen initialises
and the blue OS X background and startup bar appear.
From this point on the card works flawlessly.
My current config.
Beige G3 MT 266 Rev A
OWC G4 500 MHz 1 MB Cache 66 MHz Bus
384 MB PC100 CL2 RAM (3x128 MB)
Sonnet Tempo ATA133 ATA Card
OEM 2xUSB/2xFireWire PCI Card
Maxtor 30 GB H/D
ATI Radeon 7000, Dual display using two NEC 1860NX LCD Panels
Apple Extended Keyboard/MS Wheel Mouse Optical USB
Also note that the Xbench score for this machine is 45.31 - a
typical score for a B&W
G3 with a G4 500 CPU is only 47.94, not that much of a difference
which could be attributed to the B&W having 640 MB of RAM as
opposed to my machines 384 MB. What I'm trying to say is the Beige G3
is a viable machine. Is much cheaper to buy than a B&W, and
the same upgrade parts can be brought to within a hairs breadth of the
B&W's performance.
A passing thought, having once owned a B&W G3 450 Rev2, I have
found that a serious performance increase can still be had by adding an
ATA100/133 card and replacing the already better spec onboard
controller.
Americans say 2/11/03, the British say 11/2/03, and I do an end run
around the whole convoluted international mess by dating my articles
2003.02.11. This way nobody is confused regardless of local
tradition.
Thanks for your field report. I'd sure hate to have a bootup problem
before the driver loads, though. And, as the Bare Feats benchmarks
indicate, there are areas where other video cards do a better
job.
Yes, the beige G3 can be a very viable machine, although the cost of
adding a Sonnet Tempo Trio because you already have a video card and
sound card but still need to add a faster IDE controller, USB, and
FireWire is prohibitive. Given the US$100 premium for a B&W G3 with
onboard USB and FireWire plus better video, a faster IDE bus, a faster
system bus, etc., that's what I'd pick.
Of course, the price differential probably varies by market around the
world, so differences in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere may be quite
different from here in the States.
In response to the same article, Gerald McRoberts notes:
FYI, I've been running Mac OS X 10.2 with a Radeon 7000 card in a
Beige G3 MT (upgraded with a 400 MHz G4) since last summer, when I
bought the Harry Potter game for my son's 10th birthday (requires 3D
acceleration). There were a couple of problems with initial booting and
black screens, but that's been resolved, and now I have no problem
booting back and forth between OS 9.2 and OS X 10.2. I think the
July 2002 update was required:
http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/mac/macos-july-2002-update.html
According to the read-me (http://pdownload.mii.instacontent.net/ati/drivers/RADEON-0207.html):
ATI Displays - Supported Cards The current Mac OS X revision
of ATI Displays supports all retail Radeon series cards. Please check
the ATI web site for updates including support for other card
models.
It doesn't appear that Quartz Extreme works; Apple says you have to
have AGP, I think.
Anyway, always enjoy your site. As a researcher (infant language
development) at a smallish university, I run my lab on low-end Macs
("TRAILING-edge technology"). I've got 2 Beige AIO's, a MT, 6400, and a couple of Power Computing
machines - PowerBase 180 and PowerTower Pro 225. Your site has been a
life saver more than once, and I never buy used without checking out
all the specs!
Thanks for the helpful report. Looks like ATI's right hand and left
hand are not communicating, since they still have the incompatibility
article posted.
There is apparently a hack that enables Quartz Extreme on PCI Radeon
cards, but the PCI bus itself is such a bottleneck that performance is
oftentimes worse with the hack than without it.
Happy to hear you find LEM so useful. The whole point of starting the
project was collecting the best information on older Macs (and later
clones) to help buyers make better decisions and support folk have a
better understanding of what they were dealing with.
And we got one more email on the subject, this one from Leonard
Gerstel:
Just thought I would let you know that the 7000 in a beige does work
with 10.2. You don't get any video until Jag is almost fully loaded, so
if you get a kernel panic, you would need to hook the monitor to the
onboard video to see what is going on.
There is also a hack that allows you to use Quartz Extreme with the
7000. From the reviews I've read, if you enable Extreme with a PCI
Radeon, you get about a 5% increase in day to day video performance,
but DVD playback takes a 30-40% hit, so I haven't enabled it yet.
Here are the best resources on the subject:
Those with B&W G3s seem to benefit most from the patch, which
would be helped by a combination of a 66 MHz PCI bus, 100 MHz system
bus, and generally faster processors than found in beige G3s. Results
on beige G3s, older (unsupported) Power Macs, and even the Yikes! G4
appears mixed and seems to vary by application.
Try it. You might like it - and if you don't, PCI Extreme! comes with
Damage Control, a program that can undo the changes it makes.
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
