One man’s Macintrash is another man’s Macintreasure
While I consider myself a huge Apple fan, I’m not one of those snooty, latte-sipping Jobs disciples found lounging about the local Apple store as if it were their private nerd-oasis.
I’m always looking for a good deal, and being an Apple fan does not make me too elite to do most anything for a free Mac; even if it requires digging through the trash.
That situation presented itself a few weeks ago as I was driving past my neighbors home only to find a shiny PowerMac G3 (the Apple desktop from ‘97-’98 with a translucent case, lovely blue accents, gaudy handles, and the “hockey puck” mouse) sitting on the curb with the trash. Of course I immediately placed my shiny new toy in the car and continued to dig through the trash until I found the accompanying power cord. I brought it home, plugged it in, and crossed my fingers as I pressed the power button.
To my pleasant surprise, it powered up quickly and smoothly. Unfortunately, OS 8.5 was still installed. I quickly became bored tinkering around with the ancient (by today’s standards) operating system, so I installed a fresh copy of OSX Tiger out of curiosity, assuming it would run like Windows Vista on a TI-83 calculator ( i.e. slow as hell).
Shockingly, the PowerMac G3 ran almost as smoothly as my brand new Intel Macbook in basic tasks. After this revelation, I went on eBay and purchased 512mb of old Mac ram for $30. Once installed, my little PowerMac was humming along, running multiple applications smoothly. The only thing that caused it to hiccup were HD QuickTime movies (certainly forgivable from a 10 year old system).
It really is remarkable how well OSX runs on old Mac hardware, and it’s a true testament to Apple’s un-bloated, slick OS. Can you imagine Windows Vista running smoothly on the decade-old Dell or Compaq collecting dust in your grandmas’ basement? I think not.
Anyone who has recently taken the plunge and switched over to the Mac side of life can take a considerable sigh of relief knowing that in 2017, they will most likely be able to go to their local Apple store, pick up the latest Mac OS and have it up and running smoothly on their current hardware. Let’s see a PC do that!
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July 9th, 2007
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July 9th, 2007
How interesting. I was just thinking about getting an old mac for less than $300 for my first year of college.
November 21st, 2008
Heh… I feel like rescuing the old iMac that’s sitting in a corner of the art dept at work now… I think it’s actually an original (the deep blue colour) and though I didn’t manage to scare up a USB keyboard & mouse to test it properly, it did fire up OK when I plugged it in
A future classic I think.
Though the memory upgrade would be a must, as I remember trying to use a similar one seriously back in 2002 and it was dreadfully slow and thrashy even at the time
… and maybe strip the CRT out (to wrap in antistatic bubblewrap somewhere to reinstall for Antiques Roadshow) for an LCD to make it lighter and easier on the eyes.
November 21st, 2008
Oh, and if you fancy any of this kind of treasure-trash, head to any local educational establishment and ask if you can trawl thru their junk room (where old systems go to die before the scrap man comes to call) and take some of the unwanted tonnage away free-of-charge. (Or hospital, or other public institute, or even just random offices if you’re brave and patient) …. you’ll likely have to sign some kind of waiver to comply with recycling regs, and get a receipt to prove you haven’t stolen it (those pesky anti-theft tags and index marks!), but there’s all sorts of stuff going begging.
As well as the iMac, there’s an Acorn A4000 knocking around somewhere if it hasn’t gone in the skip already, some interesting old protoplasmic laptops, and I was too late to rescue a classic XT seemingly equipped with interface cards for directly downloading weather satellite images with an appropriate dish… Somewhat off the topic of getting a still-useful Mac for nothing I’ll admit, but you may be able to strike lucky in that same arena. If they’re not still being pushed into service, that is.