The cheapskate's guide to G3 iMacs
» Or: How to get a dated but cool hacking box for cheap.
First of all, why would you even want an old iMac? Why, because they are pretty, cheap, and make excellent hacking boxes, of course. Use that boring Windows machine for work and a colorful iMac for stuff you actually like doing. ;-)
So what are the benefits and drawbacks of a G3 iMac? Let's break it down.
The good
- They're pretty. :-) OK, that may seem like a superficial reason to get one, but if you want something that doesn't look like a beige/white/black box, your choices are very limited. If Alienware is outside of your budget, fruit-flavored iMacs start looking quite good.
- They're cheap. Granted, they are not exactly state of the art these days. But it's still possible to find a machine with acceptable specs for $100 or less. For example, I got an indigo G3/400 with 384 Mb of memory and 13 Gb hard drive, for $80. There are still similar deals out there.
- Assuming they have enough memory, they are still capable of running modern software. I'm running Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) without problems. Rarely do I run into performance problems.
- They are very suitable for hacking, using command line and text editors. Mac OS X, being Unix-based, has a full-featured command line (I use Terminal, but alternatives are available), and many editors are available for it (although gvim isn't really up to snuff, IMHO).
The bad
- Needless to say, if you want to use your machine for heavy-duty video editing, or playing the latest 3D games, then you should probably look further.
- Bear in mind that your favorite color might not be available, at least not with acceptable amounts of memory and hard disk space. You may have to wait, or settle for a different color. (As it happens, the G3s that are most likely to have the best specs, are also the most boring: white ("snow") and grey ("graphite").)
The ugly
There are rumors that Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, won't run on G3s at all. Ugh. It's unclear at this point whether this will actually be the case. If so, G3 users will still be able to get by with Tiger for a while, but eventually new versions of many apps will be Leopard-only, making it more and more difficult to stay up-to-date. :-(
(There's also a possibility that Leopard won't be officially supported, but that it can be made to run on G3s anyway, with some clever hackery...)
Your choices
There's more to choose from than just colors.
The G3 iMacs came in two variants: tray loading and slot loading. In general, a slot-loading iMac is a bit more modern and has better specs than its tray-loading counterpart.
|
Date
|
Color
|
Speed (MHz)
|
Type
|
|
Aug 1998
|
bondi blue
|
233
|
tray
|
|
Oct 1998
|
bondi blue
|
233
|
tray
|
|
Jan 1999
|
strawberry, blueberry, lime, purple, tangerine
|
266
|
tray
|
|
Apr 1999
|
strawberry, blueberry, lime, purple, tangerine
|
333
|
tray
|
|
Oct 1999
|
strawberry, blueberry, lime, purple, tangerine, graphite
|
350/400
|
slot
|
|
Jul 2000
|
graphite, ruby, snow, indigo, sage
|
350/400/450/500
|
slot
|
|
Feb 2001
|
indigo, graphite, flower power, blue dalmatian
|
400/500/600
|
slot
|
|
Jul 2001
|
indigo, graphite, snow
|
500/600/700
|
slot
|
Also note that while some Macs come with CD-ROM drives, others have CD-RW or DVD-ROM players. This really depends on the actual machine rather than the series. Ditto for memory. Naturally, the older machines started out with less memory (32/64 Mb) than the later ones (128/256 Mb).
What to look for
Now go on eBay (or your favorite second-hand Mac store) and get the machine you want. :-) Here are my recommendations.
- Memory: I would get at least 256 Mb, but more if you can help it. As I mentioned, my Mac has 384 Mb, and it works fine for me. Of course, 512 would be even better, since Tiger likes a lot of memory. The more, the merrier.
- Hard drive: I have 13 Gb, which is really the bare minimum, considering the operating system takes at least 4 Gb (more if you also want to install XCode). Maybe you could get by with 10 Gb, but you probably won't want to. Unfortunately, Macs with larger hard drives are kind of hard to get, unless the types are "snow" or "graphite". Again: the bigger the drive, the better, but remember that this will also raise the price.
- Processor speed: Perhaps surprisingly, this doesn't seem to matter so much. In theory, my G3, with its 400 MHz processor, seems to be so much slower than contemporary machines. (For example, my Windows box is a 2.8 GHz Intel Celeron, and it's 2.5 years old.) However, in practice, I find that it runs just fine. You probably shouldn't have 20 apps open at the same time, but in general, the processor speed isn't much of a bottleneck... in my experience, lack of memory is much more of an issue.
Some considerations
These pretty much speak for themselves, but I thought I'd mention them anyway.
- Some eBay sellers think they're slick and put up a machine at a low price, then ask $75 for shipping. As you pay the listed price plus shipping, this isn't a good deal, unless the kind of shipping mentioned is actually worth $75, e.g. because it's really fast, or has insurance, etc.
- Read the listing carefully. Some Macs don't come with mouse, keyboard or power cord. Make sure you are aware of what you're actually getting. By the way, you might want to consider getting a new keyboard and/or mouse anyway, because (in my experience) old Mac keyboards break easily (especially the space bar), and the round mice really aren't that comfortable.
- Sometimes a machine has small (?) flaws that might knock down the price, like a funky monitor. If such a blemish is not a problem for you, you can find some pretty good deals.
Tips
Since your Mac is not a Dual Core, you probably won't want to bog it down by running all kinds of unnecessary stuff. Here are a few things you can do to free up memory and cycles:
- turn off Dashboard
- turn off Spotlight, or restrict the number of locations where it looks, so indexing doesn't take as long
- use thousands of colors rather than millions
:::
Update/1: There's now a cheapskate guide for clamshell iBooks too! ^_^