Upgrade for Compatibility, Ease of Use, Not
Always Speed
From John Muenzberg
Charles,
I have two comments on recent discussions in your Feb. 27 column
(Dvorak Adoption Notice, Tips for Apple's Yo-yo
Power Supply, Old iMac a Good Value?, and More).
For both Krista's iMac 333 and your discussion about 10.3 vs.
10.4:
About six months ago I bought an iMac
350 off of eBay for my 70
year old mother-in-law. I bought the iMac upgraded with OS X
10.4, a 20 GB hard drive, and 512 MB of RAM. She uses it for email
and occasional Web surfing. This replaced a G3 upgraded 7500 that ran OS 9 very fast.
Like you, I was worried about the speed of OS X 10.4 on the
iMac. I thought 10.3 might be better, but I did not own a copy. All
my mother-in-law talked about was that the new computer was more
compatible with websites and files, and that she gets no "you must
upgrade" boxes.
I learned that she didn't care about speed, but as a
nontechnical user she wanted compatibility and ease of use. Similar
users, and perhaps Krista, should consider an upgrade to Panther or
Tiger for ease of use and compatibility, despite the reduction in
speed.
Another recommendation for Krista might be an external hard
drive. External drives under 40 GB are very cheap online.
About the Lombard upgrade: You recommended to a reader the
Daystar G4 upgrade for his Lombard. The positive reviews of this
service are accurate. I upgraded my Lombard last summer and I have
had no problems. The upgrade is stable and the heat of the G4 is
not a problem. Highly recommended.
Thanks,
John Muenzberg
Hi John,
You're right about speed and light users. It's all
relative. I'm sure some people would find the level of performance
I find tolerable on my old 'Books running Panther and Tiger hard to
live with.
My daughter has a 400
MHz G3 iMac and runs Tiger on it. She's not happy with the
speed, but she can't afford to upgrade right now, and the computer
is very usable.
Thanks for the report on the Daystar Lombard
upgrade. I have a Daystar 550 MHz G4 upgrade in my Pismo, and it's
been a flawless performer over more than two years now.
Charles
SeaMonkey 'Fastest of the Mozilla
Browsers'
From Peter Tyler
Many thanks for your recent LEM articles on SeaMonkey (see
SeaMonkey Preview Internet Suite
and SeaMonkey Is a Workhorse).
I've switched over to it for the bulk of my tasks on Macs as well
as Windows PCs, as it seems to be the fastest of the Mozilla
browsers for the tasks I perform.
Regards,
Pete Tyler
Hi Pete,
I agree. SeaMonkey is the best performer of the
Mozillas.
I love the look of Camino, but it's still too
buggy.
Charles
What About LimeWire for File Sharing?
Hi Charles,
I noticed in your recommendations to the new iMac G3 owner that
you omitted LimeWire when it
came to file sharing options. I use an old version of LimeWire on
an iBook G3 366 MHz running OS
9.2.2 and find it fairly responsive, though only since I upgraded
to 320 MB RAM. Under the stock 64 MB, it was intolerably slow.
Patrick Fothergill
Hi Patrick,
I haven't checked out LimeWire for years, but some
people seem to like it.
Thanks for the report.
Charles
Journalistic Credibility
From Jack Thompson
Hi Charles,
I've sent you email a couple times about this aging but
venerable WallStreet of mine
(which I hope will hold out till I can finance a 'new' replacement
machine or a new Intel MacBook). Your comments around the Mac web
such as Low End Mac (LEM) and other sites are always a valuable
read.
However, the piece on LEM from 2002 that analyzed
"traditional" ideas of journalism is worthy of high praise indeed.
In fact, in many respects that article is prescient of trends
observed since and continuing apace today. The "traditional" or
"mainstream" media are teetering of their own weight, and have lost
"credibility" across a vast audience which is searching out other
ways and means of staying informed. Other voices lacking
traditional credentials but bearing higher credibility are being
heard more and more and are flowing through the cracks left by
their lumbering brethren.
Bravo!
Jack Thompson
Well, thanks so much Jack. :-)
It's always gratifying to hear that one's musings
are striking a resonant chord with readers.
There was actually a thread of columns on that
topic:
I think it holds up pretty well four years
later.
A friend of mine just migrated from a G3 clamshell iBook (his first Mac) to a new
MacBook Pro, and so far he's
delighted with it.
Charles
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