My first Mac!

[M forever]

I was in Maine for a couple of days, setting up a theater there for a little film festival, and they had a few of the old iMacs sitting there, the ones where everything was incorporated into the monitor shell. I mentioned that I found the design neat back then and since a friend had one and was rather happy with it, I almost bought one, but then I thought I didn't really need another computer after all. They had replaced these a few years ago with newer machines, so the owner of the theater said I could take one. That was a nice gesture. I know you can buy them for next to nothing on ebay, but I still thought it was very nice. So I carried it off and now I have my first Mac:



This one is pretty old though, from 2001 or so, it has a G3 processor (333MHz) and the rest I checked in the system info but forgot. The installed OS is still 9.2. I don't really know what I am going to do with it, but it is a nice oportunity to play around and get familiar with the Mac OS a little.

[Kullervo]

The computer from which I am posting is an eMac, the short-lived update of the old iMac design (the 'e' is for 'education' as they were planned specifically to be sold as a budget option for school classrooms). I think I bought one of the last ones because when I checked the Apple store site a month later, they were no longer available. I've had mine for almost three years and don't foresee any reason to replace it for at least a few years more. Say what you will about Apple, their computers are built to last — I doubt many Windows machines as old as your iMac are usable at all.

[mn dave]

iBook G4 here with external hard drive solely for music files.

[Daverz]

I was in Maine for a couple of days, setting up a theater there for a little film festival, and they had a few of the old iMacs sitting there [...], so the owner of the theater said I could take one. That was a nice gesture. I know you can buy them for next to nothing on ebay, but I still thought it was very nice. So I carried it off [...]

You should have charged him for hazardous waste removal.   

[Bonehelm]

Rofl 333mhz? Jesus christ...it could lag by just word-processing.

[PSmith08]

Rofl 333mhz? Jesus christ...it could lag by just word-processing.

Well, the price-to-performance ratio couldn't be beat. Really. It's not possible.

From many long hours of personal experience, I can tell you that older models can still fight the good fight, as long as you know their limits.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

No offense M, but this "computer" was and is a completely and totally worthless piece of crap, and Steve Jobs should pray that no one ever uses one ever again. We had them at UC Davis when I was there--they were donated and they were capable of doing absolutely nothing (not even fricking Excel!) without freezing. Then when they did freeze, you had to find your special Mac key and hold the monitor upside down while simultaneously pressing the apple, smiley face, and teddy bear keys in order to restart. Even hardcore Mac fanatics in our department readily conceded that these machines were absolutely worthless. They should all be rounded up and collided with antimatter at the large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

They should all be rounded up and collided with antimatter at the large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

[71 dB]

Mac forever

Rofl 333mhz? Jesus christ...it could lag by just word-processing.

Well, around the time the first windows came out people use to do "word-processing" with 16-20 MHz PCs.  I remember the days when a 33 MHz PC was "very fast". 

Software of those days was less power consuming...

[Szykneij]

Well, around the time the first windows came out people use to do "word-processing" with 16-20 MHz PCs.  I remember the days when a 33 MHz PC was "very fast". 

Software of those days was less power consuming...

If my current computer could recognize the music-writing software I had on my IBM 486, I'd still use it.

[DavidRoss]

Well, the price-to-performance ratio couldn't be beat. Really. It's not possible.

The appalling price-to-performance ratio is one pf the reasons why Apple lost its once-dominant position in the personal computer market and has long been a niche product with a tiny market share to which it has clung only by virtue of marketing cleverness.  The insidiousness of getting into bed with the schools and thus indoctrinating gullible youngsters in the myth of Mac superiority is admirable, if sleazy, just like is their promotion of the idea of Apple as the heroic, innovative, freedom-loving hipster battling the big bad tyrant, Microsoft--even down to the current TV ad campaign--when the facts are the reverse, and Microsoft's greatest success (after tweaking Xerox's GUI to create the original Mac OS for Apple) was due to providing the OS and other software for the truly free, flexible, economical, easily upgradable, open architecture PC.

[hornteacher]

Proud MAC user since 1984!

Welcome to a world where the systems never crash and 99% of computer viruses can't harm you.

All you PC users can debate me all you like, I'll never change. 

[mn dave]

Ignore the Apple-haters. I do. 

[drogulus]

  I have no experience with MACs. They seem to be useful for music and video production. For general use the PC is hard to beat. If I didn't insist on constantly trying new programs and updating stuff all the time I would have solved the Vista problems by now. I don't see why there isn't room for both specialist machines like MACs as well as generalist ones like the PCs.

[greg]

I've never actually used a Mac, but my mom just had to give the Mac she uses back to Apple (she works for Apple), and has had it for probably a year now. Says she likes using it......
wait, now that i think of it, i have used Macs, but that was so long ago...... back in elementary school. Too long ago to remember what it was like using.

[M forever]

No offense M, but this "computer" was and is a completely and totally worthless piece of crap, and Steve Jobs should pray that no one ever uses one ever again. We had them at UC Davis when I was there--they were donated and they were capable of doing absolutely nothing (not even fricking Excel!) without freezing. Then when they did freeze, you had to find your special Mac key and hold the monitor upside down while simultaneously pressing the apple, smiley face, and teddy bear keys in order to restart.

Really? Can't you just hold down the power button?

How are these iMacs different from other Macs? I thought they were basically the same, kind of like a "lite" version.

If my current computer could recognize the music-writing software I had on my IBM 486, I'd still use it.

You can probably run that on Virtual PC. It can be downloaded for free from the MS website. Once you have installed it, you can create a virtual PC by defining what hardware config it is supposed to represent, and then you install an older OS like DOS or Win95 or 98 on it. I have done that with a number of older programs, it works well and it is nostalgic fun to play around with legacy software.

[johnQpublic]

Proud MAC user since 1984!

Welcome to a world where the systems never crash and 99% of computer viruses can't harm you.

All you PC users can debate me all you like, I'll never change. 

ME TOO!!!!

Every single PC my wife has bought since the mid-1990's has crashed and screwed up (including the latest with Vista system which Mac is correctly making fun of in current TV commercials) numerous times. Meanwhile my Mac keeps humming along peacefully and correctly. The only reason I buy new ones (every 4-7 years) is for the upgraded tech I need for my music notation programs.

[PSmith08]

The appalling price-to-performance ratio is one pf the reasons why Apple lost its once-dominant position in the personal computer market and has long been a niche product with a tiny market share to which it has clung only by virtue of marketing cleverness.  The insidiousness of getting into bed with the schools and thus indoctrinating gullible youngsters in the myth of Mac superiority is admirable, if sleazy, just like is their promotion of the idea of Apple as the heroic, innovative, freedom-loving hipster battling the big bad tyrant, Microsoft--even down to the current TV ad campaign--when the facts are the reverse, and Microsoft's greatest success (after tweaking Xerox's GUI to create the original Mac OS for Apple) was due to providing the OS and other software for the truly free, flexible, economical, easily upgradable, open architecture PC.

I meant the price-to-performance ratio of the specific computer M received. Since I think he was given the computer, the price would be $0.00. Strictly speaking, that price-to-performance ratio cannot be beat. We have to be very careful with our math, but it's possible to do so and arrive at my result.

As to the general question, I have used an Intel iMac for a couple of years and just bought a MacBook Pro. While there are some technical reasons for my switch, it boiled down and remains an issue of which OS I like to use more and the fact that Macs are generally more visually in-line with what I consider good design.

I, therefore, leave the current price-to-performance ratio to those who care, confining my concerns to the instant case.

[drogulus]

  Of course PCs are more troublesome. It would be a miracle if they weren't. A PC isn't a machine, it's every possible kind of machine that can run a Windows OS and there's no one to say "Uh, you can't do that because it will break everything else". Then just when everyone settles down in comfort with XP along comes Vista, which like all previous OS'es will be perfected the day before Microsoft ceases to support it. All in all, Bill Gates deserves every dollar he squeezed out of me over the years and if he went to Heaven he'd own the place in 6 months which would certainly be an improvement.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

I, therefore, leave the current price-to-performance ratio to those who care, confining my concerns to the instant case.

The only "performance" you're likely to get out of one of these early iMacs is freezing up, but at least the folks who bought the early iMac doglogs can feel self-righteous in the delusion that they're not lining Bill Gates' pockets (and Doesn't MS OWN quite a lot of Apple stock anyway???)

And to answer M's question, when I was at Davis, when we needed to reboot, we always had to find some ridiculous little pin tool and find the hole on the back of the monitor in which to insert it.

In all fairness, even though I generally hate Macs, and the religious zealotry that characterizes so many Mac users, I will admit that the most recent crop of iMacs are vastly improved over the early ones, both in performance and in design.