Low End Mac is about getting the most from your Mac. Perhaps the
hottest value at the show was the Sonnet Crescendo G3/300 upgrade card
for all the Macs and clones that take daughter card upgrades. If you're
running anything slower than a G3/250, the show special price of $99.77
is an impressive value.
What about G4 upgrades? We don't normally recommend them unless
you're using G4-savvy applications such as Photoshop and iMovie, but
Sonnet is selling their G4/350 card with Mac OS X for
$198.61.
Best Upgrade Product
As far as we're concerned, the best upgrade shown at the Expo was
the Sonnet Harmoni iMac upgrade. Harmoni works with the old
drawer-loading iMacs, which shipped from Apple with 233, 266, and 333
MHz processors. It replaces the old G3 with a 500 MHz G3e processor,
which has a 256 KB level cache running at 500 MHz. To top it off,
Harmoni brings these older iMacs into the FireWire era - all that for
$299. The only drawback? It won't be available until early 4th
quarter.
The Sonnet Harmoni earns our Best Upgrade Product of the Expo
award.
Runner Up Upgrade Product
Got WallStreet? If so, Sonnet's new 500 MHz G3 upgrade might appeal
to you. Due out by the end of the year, this will make even the
cacheless 233 MHz WallStreet as fast as this year's iBook. $399.
Upgrading an Older iMac
This begs the question: Is it worth upgrading an older iMac?
You should have no trouble buying a pair of 256 MB memory modules
for the iMac for as little as $100 shipped - check ramseeker for the latest
prices. That gives you 512 MB, regardless of what Apple officially says
these iMacs can support. Just make sure what you're buying is no more
than 1.5" high. There's almost no reason not to buy RAM at these
prices.
If you're outgrowing the 4-6 GB drive that came with a Rev. A-D
iMac, I strongly recommend the IBM Deskstar GXP series of hard drives.
These are fast, reliable, 7200 RPM hard drives that a lot of us
consider the best values on the market. A quick check with Oupost.com
shows 20 GB at $99.95, 40 GB at $124.95, and $60 GB at $204.95. I'd go
with 40 GB as the best value unless you're on a very tight budget.
If you're still using a fairly stock, low memory, early iBook,
buying Harmoni for $300, one or two sticks of memory at about $50 each,
and a 20 or 40 GB hard drive puts your upgrade cost in the $450-525
range.
A new 500 MHz iMac is going to cost you $1,000 and up (see the week's best iMac deals for
specifics). You'll sometimes find a used iMac 333 selling for about
$650, so the cost of buying a used Revision D and upgrading it to 500
MHz doesn't justify going that route, but if you already have a Rev.
A-D iMac an are dreaming of a newer model, Harmoni plus RAM plus a new
hard drive is definitely worth considering.
Upgrading an Older Power Mac or Clone
With the Power Mac G4/733 considered entry-level at $1,699,
upgrading an older Power Mac can be a reasonable way to improve
performance without investing another $1,000 in your system.
As with the iMac, memory is cheap. ramseeker includes prices as
low as $39 a stick for 128 MB DIMMs. If you've got less than 256 MB,
definitely consider buying more at today's prices.
If you've outgrown your old hard drive, I suggest avoiding SCSI and
going IDE/Ultra ATA. The Sonnet Tempo card adds ATA support to PCI
Power Macs and clones for just $100. Then add an IBM Deskstar, the same
models recommended for iMac upgrade. You'll be very happy with the
speed and incredible drive capacity.
CPU upgrades provide a lot of options. Unless you plan on running
OS X or use a G4-savvy application regularly, buy a G3 upgrade.
Prices range from $100 to $350 with speeds of 300 to 500 MHz. The sweet
spot of price and performance is probably 400 MHz cards.
There are several FireWire/USB cards on the market, so if you need
both ports, you can add a card for under $100. If you just need USB,
you can probably find a card for less than $30.
You might want to consider a newer video card, an area I'm not
particularly familiar with. I suggest ATI because they've had a good
working relationship with Apple for years, so drivers should be very
compatible.
In all, you can probably upgrade a PCI Power Mac or clone to a very
comfortable level for under $600.
Upgrading a Power Mac G3
The economics of upgrading a beige or blue & white G3 are even
better. ZIF upgrades are less costly than daughter cards, although they
aren't available in the same low speeds. Sonnet sells the 400 MHz
Encore G4/ZIF for $300. That'll boost a 233 MHz G3 by 50% and give you
the Velocity Engine.
PC100 memory sells for as little as $27 a 256 MB stick - stock
up!
Hard drives? IBM Deskstar is our top choice.
For about $500 you can add a 20 GB hard drive, three 256 MB memory
sticks, and a 400 MHz G4 to your older beige or blue & white G3 -
not bad at all.
UPDATE: The Sonnet HARMONi card was incompatible with early
versions of Mac OS X 10.4. The FireWire port would tie up 100%
of CPU resources. This problem was fixed in version 10.4.7 (if
not earlier). If you have a HARMONi card that's had this issue,
be aware that updating to 10.4.7 or newer should fix it.
