Mac question, is it worth it?

Computer Forum General Hardware
1

I’ve just come in posession of a G3 Power Mac from an acquaintance who is trying to flog it off on me. He’s asking for 50 quid (damn UK keyboard map doesn’t work) for it but I don’t know if this is a bargain or if he’s trying to screw me as I know nothing about Macs. Therefore I was hoping someone out there would be able to give me a rough assessment of how good the machine is and what it’s equivalent is in PC terms (I realise that the architecture of Macs and PC’s is so different that such comparisons are usually unfair but do your best OK).

Here are the specs of the machine:

Speed: 300MHz
RAM: 192MB
Hard-drive: 6GB
OS: Mac OS X 10.2.8

It also has a zip drive and an external SCSI CD writer.

Is this thing a ninja or a turkey? My initial impression is turkey (300MHz?) but I could be wrong.

2

i wouldnt recommend it, OS X is awesome, but yeah G3 power macs arent really the best

I wouldnt do it

3

for 50 quid? u mean gbp? i’d do it, just because OSX is good and even if it isnt the best processor its still a good buy as macs are pretty reliable and dont need to be the fastest to work well

4

More like an out of shape ninja who fogot the throwign stars. It will run OS X okay if you don’t do anything very intensive but for 50 pounds it’s a real bargin! There’s some upgrade potentail because it’s a tower as well. It’s about the equivalant of a 1Ghz PIII I’d say. It’s a rough estimate but an 875Mhz Mac (I think that’s what it was) is faster than a 1.7GHz p4 in some tests so I’m looking at that. I’d go for it. Internet and PhotoShop 5 machine!

5

yeah you get Safari, i love that and you can upgrade it, find some parts on ebay or something, for £50 i’d jump at the chance

6

Hmm… not sure I like this OS, doesn’t look very tweakable and I’m already bored with the animation effects. If I do decde to get it I’ll probably chuck it out and stick Gentoo on it or something. Oh yeah, I’d only been using it for about ten minutes and already I HATE THIS DAMNED 1-BUTTON MOUSE! Sorry, maybe Apple had a gone reason for it at the time but the whole idea is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

7

i love osx, i think its great, i dont care about its tweakability i jus think its a great os to use

8

OK, sell me. What’s so good about it apart from the eye-candy which I’m already bored with?

9

i really think for £50 its a great offer, even if you dont like it the internet browser is awesome and apple macs can run and run and run my friend has one and leaves it on 24/7 does graphics intensive tasks and it just keeps runnin, no problems ever

10

okay then where abouts are you? are you in the u.k? can he deliver?

11

He’s a neighbour. I have the machine at the moment on the floor of my bedroom. I’m alternating between playing around with it and browsing these forums on a Slackware laptop.

Hang on, I’ve just had an idea! I’m going to try and connect it to the 'net. Be right back!

12

personally for £50 its a great deal, do you get a monitor with it? if not then its still good but with it would be a great deal, reasons for buying:
reliable,
OSX comes with it (a great OS)
can be a good internet, photoshops machin like ex said,
cheap,

13

OK I failed miserably, how do I start the DHCP client or run test programs like ping on it? I connect to the Internet via a Belkin modem that runs a DHCP server. To connect all I need to do is run a DHCP client program on the computer which gets an IP from the modem and is then connected. The Mac seems to be configured to use DHCP on its Ethernet interface but no net. I can’t even connect to the modem from Safari. Ideas?

14

waste of money. OSX will crawl on a 300mhz. I use a 400mhz g3 512mb during school and the thing is like a fat ninja that just ate turkey

15

yeah actuall ninja is right, its a gr8 os but it may be a little slow, its like xp on a 500MHz processor or something…

16

+safari it will run really slow.

It would make a very nice fish tank though.

17

yes could make a very nice fish tank, or you could do what many people have done and put a pc inside it, might take some work but you’ll have a nice lookin pc case

18

Hey it worked! I’m now on the 'net with Safari on a G3! I wouldn’t worry about the OS too much really, I was already planning to stick Linux on it anyway (I’ll probably keep dual-boot set-up though). I’m just interested in how good the bare hardware is. Besides, I kind of like the idea of getting a Mac anyway just for the hell of it. Maybe I’ll tell him it’s a turkey and offer 30 GBP (HA! The Macs UK keymap doesn’t work either!) for it and see if he bites :good:

19

yeah go for it, macs are always good as a general surfing machine, and for £50 you cant go wrong

20

I guess it depends, we just got an old G3 iMac for free and it has OS X, I think it’s about 300 or 400Mhz, OS X looks fine and runs alright on it. When you’re paying that little you can’t expect much, if you bought 512Mbs or ram for it real cheap it would probably be alot better. I think the thing has a Rage 128 gfx card, sweet ass for the time.
Hmmm, with out old Mac it had an internal modem so we just plugged in the phone line to the modem into to wall outlet jack and all was well. Does yous come with a modem?