OS X Performance

[monroepq]

I've been a long-time apple fan(okay, not long time, only about a year), but I have been only able to afford a PC. Well, times have changed, and I'm now saving up to buy a used iBook. Mac OS X is a must, but I need to know: well it be sluggish on my machine?

I don't plan on getting something too expensive. I expect the max speed to be about 500mhz, but I think that 300-400 is more realistic. Also, I plan on having at the most 256mb of RAM, but, more realistically, 192. So would I be able to run OS X on my future iBook, as well as some of my favorite applications(photoshop, office, dreamweaver) without much performance loss? I know I can't expect it to be great, but switching to a mac is like switching to the metric system.

Also, if anyone here knows some good sites to buy used macs(I'm currently searching on eBay, which is great), I'd really like it if you could refer me to them.

Thanks.

[Excalibur]

Powermax.com

[xaqintosh]

I think the machine you mentioned to be fine, as long as you get Jaguar on it http://www.apple.com/macosx/newversion

[gatorparrots]

By all accounts (on rumor sites at least), Mac OS X 10.2 should be at least 20% faster than the current 10.1.5 release, so you should be able to make do with lesser hardware. Apple has gone to great lengths to support older G3 configurations, so you should be fine with an iBook or other G3 processor machine.

One thing I would suggest though: don't skimp on the RAM. It's fairly cheap right now (or at least prices are going back down). It is probably the single greatest way you can speed up performance on Mac OS X. Give it as much RAM as you possibly can -- at least 256MB, but you would be much, much better off with 512MB.

My friend has 384MB in his TiBook and barely finds that adequate--He is looking to go to 512MB or possibly 768MB--And he largely just uses Microsoft Office v.X. I'm sitting pretty with 1.5GB in my G4, although I do push pixels all day with Photoshop so I need every bit of it to handle all of the graphics apps and monstrous files I work with.

[monroepq]

Yes, I am planning on going far on the RAM, as far as I can. But the problem is that many of the iBooks that I can afford only go up to about 384mb. Maybe by the time I've saved up enough, everything will be cheaper than it is right now.

Also, I have checked powermax before, and they are great, but the prices for their laptops are much more expensive than what I could find on eBay. However, they do have great prices on their iMacs, if that's what I was looking for right now.

[Torz]

Hey, I own a iBook G3 500MHz, 192MB RAM, 10GB HDD and it runs OS X ver 10.1.5 very nicely can't wait till Jaguar.

As for the Photoshop, I just recently installed it for my design work and it runs surprisingly well. Well better than I expected . I think you should buy the G3 500MHz, 64MB model (What I bought, think its real cheap second hand now days) and look for cheap memories, maybe second hand although I don't think brand new memories are that expensive.

This is the place I buy my components. Check out the prices... it's in NZ$'s so just half the price and that's about how much it is in US$.

http://www.tastech.co.nz

ciao
Torz

[monroepq]

Yeah, my friend runs Photoshop on her 500mhz pentium laptop with only 60mb of ram and WIN98, and I was really surprised how well it performed for her.

Does it matter if you get PC memeory for a laptop? As long as it's the same type (SODIMM, PC100, PC133, etc.), it should work, right? Or do I have to use memory that's specifically designed to work with macs?

[gibbs]

monroeq -

It should not matter whether the Ram is specifically listed as mac compatible. It just has to be the right specs. I recommend that you check the ibook ram thread to see what was said there about ram.

Bottom line is that most of the time you can get ram at a decent price from a mac specific vendor online, and its safer at least in the respect that you can get a module that is known to work with your specific model.