Switching from PC to Mac, have question about processing speed

Question

Hi, I am going to buy a used Mac off of ebay and I am pretty clueless about where to start. I am not very knowledgable when it comes to the difference in processing speeds on pc's and apples both and have just been using what has been passed along. I am on a budget and cannot afford to do a bunch of upgrades when I get a new (to me) apple. I am currently working on a old pc (8 years?) that has had as many upgrades as it can handle. It is a Pentium III 548 mhz, 384 mb of ram and 40g hd on Windows XP. The Apple that I am stuck on getting right now is a G3 with a bunch of upgrades. It is an Imac PowerPC g3 with a 600mhz processor, 512 mb of memory, 120 gb hard drive. It has OS X 10.4 Tiger and ILife and has a single processor. It has a airport extreme card also. My question is 1) Does it take less mhz and ram to run the operating system for an apple and 2) am I going to notice a big difference in speed between what I have now and with the apple? The g3 is $249 and comes with a 90 day guarantee minus shipping. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!
Tracy

Answer 1

I'd save your money or apply it to an Apple G4 (AGP or newer) tower. Depending on how it was configured, you may find that your PIII was a little faster loading web pages than the 600 MHz iMac. My 1 GHz P3s are faster than my iMac DV G3-400 MHz models. I think $249 plus shipping for a 5 or 6 year-old iMac is a bit high. I picked up one of my G3-400 MHz iMac DVs for $20 at a thrift store. If there are any in your area that accept donated computers, you might want to check for a local bargain. While the 600 MHz model that you described is loaded, that's about as far as it goes, other than bumping the memory to 1 GB, but that would likely involve removing a pair of 256 MB DIMMs already in it, and buying a pair of 512 MB DIMMs. If it has a single 512 MB DIMM installed, you wouldn't have to spend as much. Selling the computer with Tiger installed but without the OS installer media will eventually put you in a bind, when you'll need to boot from the installer CD to perform disk repair maintenance. Some may consider Tiger to be a bit demanding of that iMac's system resources, preferring the predecessor "Panther" instead. The bottom line is that the iMac is somewhat limited, in terms of design (no PCI slots) and/or future upgrade potential. If it will suit your needs as a starter Mac, try finding a comparable model for less. You might also check for used computer dealers in your area, as that saves the cost of shipping, and return shipping - if there's a problem. The G4 tower has more potential for hardware tweaking, if you decide to stick with the Mac OS. You can find G4 towers at eBay selling for less than $249, but you'd need to have a monitor. Is space at a premium, in terms of a preference for the iMac's compact form factor? There is a direct correlation between the OS version and the optimal processor speed and amount of installed memory to adequately run it. OS X needs/uses more memory than the older, pre-OS Mac versions, just as Vista or XP2 requires more memory than Windows Me or 98SE. A comparison of Intel's P3s to Apple's G3s or G4s gets into the debate over which one handles more instructions per clock cycle than the other at a given speed. It's difficult to do a head-to-head comparison, because the hardware and software is not the same.