Have I made a mistake buying a G3????

JBarbier · Jul 10, 2005

Of course I found this forum AFTER jumping on what I thought was a great deal... but, here is my dilemma: About ~4 months ago I was absolutely FED up with Windoze. And I used Macs, exclusively, (g4 800mhz/256mb) in all of my journalism classes and I fell in love with them. So, fast forward to this week, and my pc laptop (less than 2 yrs old) just flat-out died on me. Perfect oppurtunity to buy an iBook, eh? Well, I'm just a poor student, and even with the discount the cheapest iBook is still about 400 dollars too much. $500 is/was my budget. Period. I can't even afford that with my car note, insurance, living expenses, not to mention tuition (scholarship only pays about 60%)...you get the picture. I found a friend of a friend that had a G3 800mhz iBook with 640 mb RAM, 30 gb harddrive, and dvd/cd-rw drive (including case, printer, apple mouse and keyboard, and even a first generation iPod) for $550.00. So what, I went over my budget by 50 bucks, but this is the same speed iBook as the G4 800mhz desktop, right? WRONG!!! Seems that there is a HUGE difference in the G3 and G4 processors... sucks for me. I'll admit though, that all I use my laptop for is internet/word processing at school, so even this system should suffice, right? For curiousity's sake, how do you think this computer will stack up against my previous laptop, which was an acer travelmate 233 with 2.0ghz celeron processor, 256mb ram, and a 30gb hard drive? I'm thinking it will probably stack up similarly to the acer. Also, is it possible to put an AirPort card on this iBook? My friend's friend says that I can't put one on there, but I recall reading that all you have to do is lift the keyboard up to install the card, right? Anyway, thanks for the help, and I'm sorry for the long-ish (grammatically incorrect, sorry it's late...or I guess it's early...) post, but you get the picture, right?

Graphite · Jul 10, 2005

yes you can put airport card in it.

Avalon · Jul 10, 2005

JBarbier said:
Of course I found this forum AFTER jumping on what I thought was a great deal... but, here is my dilemma: About ~4 months ago I was absolutely FED up with Windoze. And I used Macs, exclusively, (g4 800mhz/256mb) in all of my journalism classes and I fell in love with them. So, fast forward to this week, and my pc laptop (less than 2 yrs old) just flat-out died on me. Perfect oppurtunity to buy an iBook, eh? Well, I'm just a poor student, and even with the discount the cheapest iBook is still about 400 dollars too much. $500 is/was my budget. Period. I can't even afford that with my car note, insurance, living expenses, not to mention tuition (scholarship only pays about 60%)...you get the picture. I found a friend of a friend that had a G3 800mhz iBook with 640 mb RAM, 30 gb harddrive, and dvd/cd-rw drive (including case, printer, apple mouse and keyboard, and even a first generation iPod) for $550.00. So what, I went over my budget by 50 bucks, but this is the same speed iBook as the G4 800mhz desktop, right? WRONG!!! Seems that there is a HUGE difference in the G3 and G4 processors... sucks for me. I'll admit though, that all I use my laptop for is internet/word processing at school, so even this system should suffice, right? For curiousity's sake, how do you think this computer will stack up against my previous laptop, which was an acer travelmate 233 with 2.0ghz celeron processor, 256mb ram, and a 30gb hard drive? I'm thinking it will probably stack up similarly to the acer. Also, is it possible to put an AirPort card on this iBook? My friend's friend says that I can't put one on there, but I recall reading that all you have to do is lift the keyboard up to install the card, right? Anyway, thanks for the help, and I'm sorry for the long-ish (grammatically incorrect, sorry it's late...or I guess it's early...) post, but you get the picture, right?

For the uses you're describing, the G3 iBook is plenty enough, especially with it's max'ed out RAM. Of course it will not be as fast as the G4, even at the same clockspeed. Clockspeed isn't everything...

And about comparing it to a Windows PC...well, just forget it, there is no 1to1 comparison possible, due to the totally different architecture and OS.
But MacOS X on that iBook (at least 10.3) and you'll be happy with it.

Aptmunich · Jul 10, 2005

Actually I think you'll only really notice a difference between a G3 and G4 when doing multimedia tasks - aka mp3 encoding, video rendering etc. Basically the G4 has something called an Altivec unit that is brilliant for that kind of thing.

Normal tasks will not be affected by that though, so more RAM will make more of a difference.

Acill · Jul 10, 2005

You'll be fine, just dont expect it to sing and dance is all. I know a lot of people with even slower Macs doing what they want.

mynameis · Jul 10, 2005

JBarbier said:
So what, I went over my budget by 50 bucks, but this is the same speed iBook as the G4 800mhz desktop, right? WRONG!!! Seems that there is a HUGE difference in the G3 and G4 processors... sucks for me.

I have seen G3 iBook v. G4 iBook benchmarks and the G3 actually does better at certain things clock for clock. I think they speed difference would be due to the slower HD.

Padawan · Jul 10, 2005

Aptmunich said:
Actually I think you'll only really notice a difference between a G3 and G4 when doing multimedia tasks - aka mp3 encoding, video rendering etc. Basically the G4 has something called an Altivec unit that is brilliant for that kind of thing.

Exactly. An 800 MHz G4 is not necessarily going to be much faster than an 800 MHz G3 for most everyday tasks. The speed differences you're experiencing might be due to other factors such as the amount of RAM, differences in system architecture, etc.

Honestly, if you just perform a nice, clean format and installation of Panther or Tiger (just to "start fresh", especially if it's running Jaguar which isn't as "snappy" or quick as the newer OS's), you will be very happy with your iBook's performance as an everyday machine.

JBarbier · Jul 10, 2005

Padawan said:
Exactly. An 800 MHz G4 is not necessarily going to be much faster than an 800 MHz G3 for most everyday tasks. The speed differences you're experiencing might be due to other factors such as the amount of RAM, differences in system architecture, etc.

Honestly, if you just perform a nice, clean format and installation of Panther or Tiger (just to "start fresh", especially if it's running Jaguar which isn't as "snappy" or quick as the newer OS's), you will be very happy with your iBook's performance as an everyday machine.

Will Tiger run decently with only 640mb RAM though? Also, I'm not too informed on iDVD, but I've heard that it only works on processors with alvitech. Is this an editing prog or a dvd player? I won't be doing any editing, but dvds on flights would be nice. Thanks for the reassurance.

Padawan · Jul 10, 2005

JBarbier said:
Will Tiger run decently with only 640mb RAM though? Also, I'm not too informed on iDVD, but I've heard that it only works on processors with alvitech. Is this an editing prog or a dvd player? I won't be doing any editing, but dvds on flights would be nice. Thanks for the reassurance.

Yes, Tiger will run fine (I've read some conflicting reports, but Panther might still have the slight speed advantage). iDVD is for creating DVD's not watching them, and you'll have no problem watching a DVD with your iBook.

dtravis7 · Jul 10, 2005

JBarbier said:
Will Tiger run decently with only 640mb RAM though? Also, I'm not too informed on iDVD, but I've heard that it only works on processors with alvitech. Is this an editing prog or a dvd player? I won't be doing any editing, but dvds on flights would be nice. Thanks for the reassurance.

IDVD is a DVD Editing/Burning program. There is a built in DVD player in OSX that is used for playing DVD's. My old 350 Mhz Yikes based Mac plays DVD's just fine with the DVD player. IDVD is not for playing DVD's. You should be fine.

Aptmunich · Jul 11, 2005

You're also right though that iDVD will not install on a G3 machine as it requires a G4.

If you can find a cheapish copy of Panther, or have it preinstalled I'd try that before checking out Tiger, as Tiger does add some extra burdens to the CPU IMO.

Panther at least seemed a tick faster on my iBook G4.

JBarbier · Jul 11, 2005

Sweet. Thanks for all the help guys. This is an all right place! :black:

math · Jul 11, 2005

I bought a g3 iBook 600mhz - 27gb HDD, DVD/CD drive, 640mb ram - and it completely blows my old thinkpad 600 out of the water... I can comfortably use Logic Express on it with no problems (and zero latency on virtual instruments, both in Cubase and Logic!)

For me, my iBook works fine, even though it's old and relatively slow... Sure, I'd like something better, but for the time being it's my favourite piece of kit

jeXus · Jul 13, 2005

That Ibook will be fine for what you are doing. As far as your airport card is concerned. I installed my own. Its a breeze!! The only thing is you can't buy a 1st gen airport card from Apple anymore. So you have to get it on EBAY (dam that stupid EBAY song from the commercial is in my head now). Anyway, it was a good buy and you will enjoy it.

Have I made a mistake buying a G3????

JBarbier

Graphite

Avalon

Aptmunich

Acill

mynameis

Padawan

JBarbier

Padawan

dtravis7

Aptmunich

JBarbier

math

jeXus

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