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Mac Daniel's Advice

Should I Wait For OS X?

Dan Knight - 1999.11.29

Q. I enjoyed your article, Time to Buy an iMac? Personally, I'm still using my 6-1/2 year old Quadra 800 quite successfully. I know that $5,500 was a lot of money back in Spring '93, and I'm squeezing every last bit of power out of it. For most tasks, it seems about as fast as the pre-G3 Power PC machines. But on another note, I also have real problems with the stability of newer versions of the Mac OS on Power PCs.

My 800 runs System 7.6.1 and hardly ever crashes, even while using lots of devices, printing, networking, etc. simultaneously. Power PCs seem to crash much more often and suffer from extreme System Folder bloat. I'm anxiously awaiting Mac OS X, which offers the hope of Unix-like stability.

If that proves true, I'll be the first person to sign up for a G4. Any thoughts?

A. Until a little over a year ago, I was getting by with a Centris 610 (20 MHz 68LC040, about half the speed of your 800). Once we hit about 132-180 MHz 604-based Macs at work, the Centris just seemed too pokey - especially for my primary task, Web design. I could have spent about $300 for a QuadDoubler that would double CPU speed and provide the FPU my Centris lacked, but that plus a larger hard drive and a faster CD-ROM (mine was an external 1x unit) would bring the cost of updating the computer to about $800. Umax J700

Fortunately that was about the time the last clones were discontinued; the SuperMac machines went on "fire sale" pricing in June 1998. So I replaced my $1,300 (original cost) Centris 610 with an $800 (discounted from $1,800!) SuperMac J700, a180 MHz 604e machine. I haven't regretted it. I'll probably be happy with this for another two-to-four years, especially since I can drop in a fast G3 or G4 card later on.

(Honest truth: I ordered a replacement computer this week. Small Dog Electronics had stripped SuperMac S900s for $299. I'll put everything from my J700 into the S900, then drop my old video card and an old hard drive in the J700, along with a third-party 4x CD-ROM drive and $39 180 MHz 604e processor. My new computer will be exactly like what I'm using now, but in a tower configuration with two extra PCI slots. And my old computer will be just like it was when I bought it. The J700 will become my new home server, replacing a Centris 660av handling IPNetRouter, a Quadra 650 running Stalker Internet Mail Server and NetPresenz, and a Quadra 630 using Macjordomo to process over a dozen mailing lists. Low End Mac really is a low-end operation.)

My SuperMacs will run OS 8.1, 8.6, and 9.0, although Apple won't officially support them on a clone. I've heard OS 9 is incredibly stable, but I won't try it until I get my "new" SuperMac S900 set up and have a second hard drive to play with.

All of these versions of the Mac OS are very stable. I run OS 8.1 on every Quadra in the house. They're solid as rocks. Ditto for the SuperMacs and Power Macs running OS 8.6 - and 9.0 appears to be even better.

Since nothing I currently own may ever run OS X, that's not an issue for me. Some day it would be great to have it, but until then, my older Quadras and Power Macs will keep my happy.

If you have enough memory (at least 24 MB, preferably more), visit Small Dog for some great deals on a Mac OS 8.1 CD - usually available for under $30 (depending on the current special).

Not sure if you should upgrade your old Mac or replace it? Check the Mac Daniel index to see if we've already addressed your problem.

Recent Mac Daniel columns

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More in the Mac Daniel index.

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