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Upgrade 450Mhz G3 to OS X?

#1 User is offline   SonofMac Icon

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Posted 19 January 2004 - 11:29 AM

I have a 450Mhz G3 iMac with 192MB of RAM that I am considering upgrading to OS X 10.3.2. It is currently running OS 9.2.2 and I have never tried running OS X on it before. My question is will the speed of the Finder (opening and closing windows, copying files, etc.) and other system components in OS 10.3.2 be comparable to the speed in OS 9.2.2? If it is slower (which I am sure it will be), will it still be usable? I realize that the last question is very subjective, but I would like to hear the opinions of people who have already tried this upgrade.
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#2 User is offline   Mississauga Icon

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Posted 19 January 2004 - 11:57 AM

Without adding at least 512MB RAM to your current configuration, OS 10.3.2 will likely feel like a slug on your tower. Even with the added RAM, the "snappiness" you now experience in OS 9 won't be there in OS X.
BUT, with the added RAM, OS 10.3.2 will be quite manageable for most light uses.
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#3 User is offline   PCsmashr Icon

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Posted 19 January 2004 - 12:28 PM

I'd say the same thing. Back with my B&W G3 with 192 mb of RAM, OS X was sluggish. However I added 256 MB of RAM, and the machine ran great. Your imac could certainly run Panther great, but if you are looking for excellent performance, you won't find it. As far as your machine goes, panther will be plenty fast. I wanted lots of performance, so I upgraded almost everything in my mac... hehehe... next step, ati Radeon 7000! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif
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#4 User is offline   Bob_Blaylock Icon

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Posted 19 January 2004 - 03:54 PM

I ran MacOS X 10.2.x just fine on my 300 MHz beige G3 with only 128 megabytes of RAM. It's noticably slower than MacOS 9.x, but I still found the speed to be quite acceptable. Of course, if you only have 128 megabyte of RAM, then adding more RAM will improve things greatly.

I would say to go for it. If you do find MacOS X to be slower than you like, you'll still have 9.x installed as well, and can always boot into that.
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#5 User is offline   my58vw Icon

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Posted 20 January 2004 - 05:19 PM

Liek the others say just add ram and you should be able to run panther just fine. Now my experience is that OS9 is much faster than OS X in this case but you should have no problem with it. Now if you want real power go with a faster processor if possible (I.e. 900 MHz G3) and add more ram as possible.
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#6 User is offline   SonofMac Icon

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Posted 22 January 2004 - 03:11 PM

Thanks for all of your replies!

The situation sounds like it is not as bad as I first thought. I was planning to add more RAM before installing OS X, so that was not a surprise.

I am still not sure how I can justify the upgrade (besides the fact that hardly any programs are written for OS 9 anymore) because I dont really need OS X.
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