Couple questions for you Mac heads!

[IceCreamMan]

There's a few IMacs on ebay. A G3 350 Blue IMac... Do these have a good rep? I also need to know if I can upgrade the HDD? I have a 40GB that I'd love to use in it, but it would be coming from a PC... Will it run OS X smooth, or choppy? What about wireless... Can I just use an old corega USB wifi adapter and hope for the best? Any help would be apreciated.

 

[NanoBite]

IceCreamMan, I would be careful buying a Mac from eBay. Sometimes a company will have a stack of Macs for sale which are ex company computers.

I wouldn't touch them and have seen shill bidding happening on the items.

My advice is to check the Feedback of the seller; is it a long time member with lots of good feedback ... read the negatives and some of the positives.

Have a look at the bid history to see who is bidding ... once I see someone bidding who has 0 feedback I start to get a bit suspicious of Shill Bidding.

Weigh up the pros and cons of dealing with eBay to buy your Mac. Try to establish contact with the seller (I prefer individual private sellers to a eBay Store).

Here are a few links (I don't have direct experience with that particular Mac):

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_350.html

http://lowendmac.com/ppc/g3c.shtml

http://lowendmac.com/imacs/blue.shtml

 

[MacHeadCase]

Those old G3 gumdrop iMacs had a weakness: the analog board. That weakness carried over to the eMac first gen I was told by a techie. The analog board when it goes, prevents the iMac to boot completely as this is part of the hardware tests the Macs perform before continuing on to booting the system.

I dunno what they go for nowadays but I had a grape iMac that I bought from a friend and sure enough the analog board went dead on me. When taken in for repairs, I was told it would cost me around $450 CAN for the part + labour + taxes. So we decided to never mind and go for a brand new G4 iMac back then.

So just like Pulse I would advise you to be extremely careful with getting one of those: this time not because of a possible selling scam but simply because you might be caught with a computer that might not last long. Sure they are cute but anything can happen to them as they are quite old.

 

[IceCreamMan]

With the aid of the cool IRC channel... I purchased this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...MEWN:IT&viewitem=&item=290086228626&rd=1&rd=1

It's a bit better than the other one. The seller also has better feedback and what not. Not only that, but it comes with a cool keyboard and mouse!

 

[narf1899]

i would suggest a PowerMac g3...they are more upgradable and so **** cool looking...theres some good ones on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-Mac-Power...2QQihZ015QQcategoryZ14911QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[IceCreamMan]

Actually, that thing looks dog ugly! No offense to anyone who owns them... I was reading, and most of the problems have been fixed with the one I'm getting... I'm not if the seller knows I payed him as eBay is giving me problems left and right... Some are not getting my emails that go through eBay and what not... Thanks for the advice guys!