Bringing G3 Macs into the Tiger Age
From Richard Sato:
Hey Dan,
First of all I have to congratulate you on Low End Mac. It has been
and continues to be a huge resource for us Mac Maniacs.
I enjoyed your article about Bill and his efforts at refitting
iMacs. I do the same thing here in Chicago.
One point you note: "Remember
that a tray-loader G3 iMac cannot run Garage Band, iMovie, and
iChat"
I am the de facto Mac guy at Baker Demonstration School here on the
NorthShore. I have run iLife 05 (Garage Band 2.0) in our iMac G3s for
some time now, and it runs fine.
I dumpster dive, gather, restore, upgrade, and repair computers
here. These computers are then donated to schools in the inner city.
These are typically high needs schools. Many have no computers at
all!
Harry Porterfield did a piece on me some months ago. Here's the
link to the TV station site.
Currently I am helping Baker Demonstration School set up a Mac Lab.
Here's a link to their web
site. The donation is mentioned in the middle of the page.
There are a ton of still viable Macs out there just going into the
ewaste stream.
I heard last year that the state of Iowa has made a deal with Dell
and is dumping all of their iMacs. I heard this from a recycler down
there who was ripping them apart; sending the glass to China (which I
just read in Geographic is illegal) and the boards go to Belgium for
precious metal recovery.
I see Apple is now offering to recycle old Macs, but you have to buy
a new one to qualify.
Why doesn't Apple have a support program that would divert old
usable Macs to people like Bill and Me?
Anyway, thanks for your efforts.
Macs forever! (actually they do practically last forever - hence the
problem)
Richard in Evanston
Richard,
Thanks for writing. I cringe when I think of iMacs
being parted out like that - working ones, at least. As Bill Brown has
demonstrated, these can be perfect computers for those who just want to
do email, surf the Web, write, and do other basic tasks. They're worth
more as working computers than as scrap.
I looked up the iLife 05
minimum system requirements: 400 MHz G3 for the suite, 600 MHz for
GarageBand, G4 for software instruments in GarageBand and advanced
image editing in iPhoto, 733 MHz G4 for iDVD, 1 GHz G4 for iMovie HD.
That rules out the tray-loading iMacs, since the fastest is 333 MHz.
Not to say these apps may not be able to run on a slower iMac, but it
would be far from ideal.
Keep up the good work!
Dan
My Other Mac Is a Pismo
From Christopher Ruffell:
I just saw the article [This Old Pismo by John
Hatchett] and have to say that I'm still using a Pismo, loaded with OS X
10.4, upgraded with 80 GB HD and 192 MB of RAM and wireless G card -
works just fine. PC users see it half the time and think it's a
black MacBook - talk about ahead
of it's time, or at least staying somewhat current.
It needs a new battery - bad - but with that upgrade, it'll have
more uptime than it's ever had.
Works great as a communication, student using machine.
Oh, my other Mac is a Mac
Pro - but I use each almost as much ;) A Mac is a Mac is a
Mac. With it's OS, it works great!
Cheers,
- Chris
Chris,
Thanks for writing, and those old Macs do seem to run
nearly forever, and there's something almost timeless about the curvy
black PowerBook G3 design. With RAM as cheap as it is, you could really
improve performance (and probably battery life as well) with a memory
upgrade. 128 MB goes for as little as $12 these days, 256 MB for
$29.
Dan
Too Good to Be True
From David Stein in response to New Macs Before the
Expo? What Is Apple Thinking?:
"What would it take to attract this market? Two or
three PCIe expansion slots. Three drive bays: one for a 3.5" hard
drive, one for an optical drive, and one for either. A socketed CPU,
because these folks just love to upgrade. My recommendation would be a
2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo entry-level model with 2 GB of RAM, a 250 GB 3.5"
hard drive, a SuperDrive, and the same Intel X3100 video found on the
MacBook. With expansion slots, those who want or need better video
performance could easily drop in the video card of their choice. Sell
it for US$799 and watch it move out the door!"
Indeed. Great article all the way through.
The Modular Desktop Mac
From Joseph Blasi :
A few things.
The desktop Mac: 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo and onboard video with desktop
parts at $800 is little high in price for a desktop without a video
card [and] a slow CPU like that. Price it starting at the mini price
levels and maybe even drop the mini for this system.
There should be a $1,500 or less Mac laptop with a real video card -
an ATI Hyper Memory or Nvidia Turbo Cache would be okay for a low-end
video card. $2,000 just to get a 8600 with 128 MB SDRAM is high, and
you have to add $500 to get 256 MB SDRAM and a 0.2 GHz CPU speed up +
40 GB of hard drive space. Why can just pay $50-$100 more just for 256
video card?
Network Attached Storage does not need a video card/onboard video at
all, and if it has 4-port gigabit ethernet hub and 802.11n WiFi along
with some USB 2.0 ports it should also have 1 more gig-e port and also
be a Cable/DSL router + FireWire and maybe eSATA for adding more disks.
If not then 1 or 2 for teaming gig-e ports + WiFi and USB / FireWire
and maybe eSATA should be okay.
Also, real servers have onboard video low-end video cards with there
own RAM if they do have a video port.
Joseph,
I agree that $800 is a bit high for a modular desktop
Mac, but bundle it with Leopard (of course), iLife 08, iWork 08, and
one year of .mac to get users hooked on the total Macintosh experience.
We all know that if Apple wanted to, they could sell a $500 desktop
computer like this if they wanted to - maybe even $400. I just don't
think Apple wants to grow their market that fast.
As for the home server/NAS device, my idea is that it
would be set up as a ethernet/WiFi router with a WAN port and four
gigabit ethernet ports, 802.11n WiFi, a modest Intel CPU, video so it
could be hooked up to a monitor if you wanted to. Or you could just put
it on the network like a regular NAS device. Several USB 2.0 ports for
printers, keyboard, mouse, whatever would be a must. FireWire would be
nice, especially since Macs can network a very high speeds using
FireWire. eSATA would go beyond the scope of a low-end home server, but
perhaps a business version would include it.
Dan
Apple and Dell
From RJay Hansen:
Hi Dan,
Reading your column today [New Macs Before the
Expo? What Is Apple Thinking?] about the new Macs and possible
products/announcements at Macworld I had the thought while reading
about "Imagine the impact of all of those Dell kiosks in shopping malls
demonstrating Leopard. Imagine the way being able to offer Mac
OS X would distinguish Dell..."
Imagine Apple reworking that ugly Dell logo into something sleek,
sexy and cool. (That might be quite a challenge!)
Best regards,
RJay Hansen
RJay,
Ugly as it is, the Dell logo is recognized everywhere.
And imagine letting Jonathan Ive have a go at redesigning Dell's
computers.
Dan
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.
