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Think Twice About Upgrades
Roger Harris - 2002.10.04
My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your submission to Dan Knight .
I read and enjoyed Maxwell M Cabral's article on older Power Macs with new G4 upgrades, but I think there were some big gaps that should have been touched on.
I am a graphic artist, and I have and have had a lot of older Macs with various upgrades. These include 6100, 7100, 8500, 7300, 7600, and beige G3s. The processor upgrades have all been from Sonnet or PowerLogix.
I have been very happy with all of the upgrades I have, but I have some reservations about expensive upgrades (over $200 or twice the worth of the Mac) on older Macs. I should mention that I love geeking with Mac hardware and software.
The drives and busses in older Macs are starting to make a big difference if you use or might want to use OS X. I have had a 7300 with a G3/375 and a B&W G3/350 running OS X 10.1.5, and the faster bus and graphics card in the B&W made a big difference that wasn't very noticeable in OS 9.
When I installed an ATA 133 PCI card with an ATA 133 hard drive in the 7300, the differences were mitigated. When I put an ATA 133 card and hard drive in a beige G3/366 with 6 MB VRAM, the 266 ran OS X better than the 7300, but not as well as the B&W.
I also own a new 867 Dual Processor running OS X, and it is a dream to work on. Everything is fast. I had to "beg-borrow-and-borrow-more" to buy this.
Why do that? The old Macs have to have everything replaced and upgraded for a graphic artist to run OS X in a reasonable way. Also, vital parts on these older Macs are starting to go bad. I had more bad hard drives in the last year than all other years combined. I had three bad motherboards, and that is something I never had before this year. I had a SCSI port go out and even a processor go south. I was starting to feel like I was back on PCs. I haven't even touched on the problems and cost of moving to USB and FireWire.
My point is that a 7300 G4/800 might only be cost effective when a lot of "if-ands-and-buts" are taken into account. My opinion is that if you already have ATA 66 or better drive controllers, fast ATA hard drives, a Radeon video card, and USB that is working well, it may be worth another $400 upgrade.
I won't go there with my old Macs. I will buy $200 G4/500 cards, but only because my older Macs already have a lot of the upgrades I mentioned earlier. I wouldn't even spend $400 on an upgrade for my B&W. Why not? No AGP video is the main reason.
Fast video is a must with OS X. On OS 9, the B&W would do very nicely with a G4/500 that will go for $200 or less in the next couple of months, and it would be okay with OS X. Actually, the B&W runs OS 9 well with a G3/350, but a G4/500 would be a luxury.
When OS 8 came out, it left many old Macs behind. The hardware requirements of OS 8 would have been impossible, or nearly so, for the old hardware. This is what is happening with OS X and many of the Macs I have.
I love old Macs, but they are . . . old.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
Recent My Turn articles
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- 'That's Not a Computer', 07.30. Salvaging a broken PowerBook by turning it into a desktop computer.
- Upgrading a Digital Audio G4 to work better in Leopard, 06.02. In its original configuration, the dual 533 MHz Power Mac G4 was slow with Mac OS X 10.5, but add the right upgrades, and it runs Leopard quite nicely.
- My 4 favorite PowerBooks, 05.28. The PowerBook 150 has a big screen for a vintage PowerBook, the 165c has color, the 100 is diminutive, and Lombard has USB and a great keyboard.
- More in the My Turn index.
Links for the Day
- Mac of the Day: 15" MacBook Pro Core Duo, Jan. 2006 - The first Intel-based MacBook launched at 1.83-2.0 GHz, had several teething problems.
- Group of the Day: System 6 is the email list for those who choose System 6.
- November 22 in LEM history: 99: Gradebooks - 00: Leveraging Apple design - Quadra 630 to Power Mac 5200 - 02: Laptop or desktop? - 04: SuperDuper: Quick, easy, efficient backup - Cross-platform programming for the rest of us - 05: Mac video surveillance on the cheap - Which OS is best for my vintage Mac? - No 'best browser' for the Mac - Sorry state of browsers for classic Macs - 06: Core 2 means cooler running 'Books - 2.0 GHz G4 upgrade
- Support Low End Mac
Recent Content on Low End Mac
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- More links in our archive.
Recent Deals
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- More deals in our archive.
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