Question for long-time Mac users

[CalamityJanet]

About 8 years ago we needed a computer. My husband is artistc and wanted to explore computer graphics, so at the advice of someone "in the know" we bought a Mac. Then the family all chipped in and gave him Photoshop5. Well, he didn't follow through, and now the Mac sits in the corner, unused except for tracking the houshold budget. We can't even do the internet banking on it anymore unless we upgrade the OS.

Now I'm into my new dslr and Elements (on my PC), and I read a lot of things here from all the Mac users that make me wonder if I'd like to use the Mac. Also, Dave is watching my progress with Elements and I think that if the MAc was updated he'd like to get more involved in digital photography with his old Mac. So my question is...can I beef-up that old Mac to be acceptably usable in today's world, or would I need to start from scratch with a whole new computer. I'd be willing to put some money into it, up to a point.

It's a G3. I think it has 256MB of RAM, don't know the size of the hard drive, but it ain't much, OS 9.2. If you need any other details just tell me how to find them. I have a feeling this Mac is a lost cause, but I thought I'd ask anyway. Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Carbone]

It's a bit old for a major upgrade, unfortunately. A G3 chip might be replaced with a G4, but then, you'd still be 2 two chips behind (G5 and Intel nowadays). It probably has USB 1.1, which is kind of very slow to upload pictures from a Compact Flash card, for example. Memory would need to be upgraded too, up to a gig for best results, at least. And now comes the not so funny part of the video card which can't be upgraded on an iMac, but could if you have PowerMac. And this would probably mean hunting for a compatible card. An 8 years old computer isn't exactly state of the art technology so it requires older parts.

However, the current market value of a G3 computer ranges probably between 40$ and 130$ (my own guesstimate..). The sum of all the hardware upgrade + software (Mac OS 10.4, PSE4 for Mac, iLife '06 or '07, possibly iWork '06 too) would make this upgrade the price of a new Mac.

However, I did have an old iMac G3, 300 Mhz, with 256MB of RAM and in which I installed a bigger hard drive (replaced the 6GB with a 80GB, partitioned because those computer required the first hard drive to be no more than 6GB big), which was running Mac OS 10.3 and PSE4. Slow, granted, but it was ok for small work. My niece has it for her school homework now and loves it. She runs Office 2004 on it and she's in heavens. However, for big PSE work, it just doesn't make sense, it's too slow.

You would be better in investing in a new Mac, maybe using a dual boot thing to keep your Windows around and be able to run Mac OS and the whole iLife suite. Or run Windows within Mac OS (virtualization). You could sell the current iMac on E-Bay and invest this money in a new Mac.

Ray

[CalamityJanet]

Thank you, Ray, for your detailed assessment. You've confirmed my hunch that the old Mac is pretty worthless.:mad: