Should I buy an iBook 500 MHz?

-@--@-
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
It is the first generation of iBooks with only 64 MB of ram, CD-Rom and measly 8 MB VRAM.



The iBook is in mint condition but sadly don?t include any software except what was in the box originally. The OS is 9.1 and OS 10.1.



The seller would like 500- for it but I think that is a bit steep, especially considering that I have to buy a new OS and 512 MB of ram for it, to have it useable. I also fear the battery is busted; she used it as a stationary but never removed the battery. If I upgrade it I?m getting near the price for a brand new one.



I know that the later versions of OS 10 demand at least 16 MB of VRAM and here is the iBook is sadly lacking, how would this affect performance?



The iBook primary use would be as a typewriter and a bit of web surfing.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    pensievepensieve Posts: 661member
    $500 is way too much for that 'book. I just bought an 800mhz g3 version for ~$300. Admittedly, that was a great deal, but $500 should get you more than that. (In May that version will be 3 years old.)
  • Reply 2 of 8
    -@--@- Posts: 39member
    My thoughts exactly, I was thinking 300,- but now I think I maybe should go lower. How do you think the iBook will perform with OS 10.3 with 574 MB RAM?
  • Reply 3 of 8
    pensievepensieve Posts: 661member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by -@-

    My thoughts exactly, I was thinking 300,- but now I think I maybe should go lower. How do you think the iBook will perform with OS 10.3 with 574 MB RAM?



    I've got an 350 mhz G3 iMac (at my parent's house) running 10.3 very well. The problem isn't the speed, it's the hard drive space. That iBook probably only has a 10gig drive and they are a *bitch* to upgrade yourself. Add about $200 to get it professionally done and you've got the price of something much better. You're better off passing on it, honestly, if you want to go to 10.3. Between the costs of getting it upgraded (RAM, HD, OS), I don't think it's worth it. If you want to keep it where it is, it's not a bad computer.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    My mom's using my old 500MHz iBook with 640MB RAM and it runs well enough for basic things in Panther.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by EmAn

    My mom



    And once more EmAn drags his mom into the AI forums



    j/k
  • Reply 6 of 8
    der kopfder kopf Posts: 2,275member
    I'd have to concur. 500 is too much for that ibook, especially with the complete lack of RAM. However, you shouldn't sell it short. My old 600, with the same Video Card, did excellently under Panther, and I did put it to the test often enough. Also, it's not that Panther needs 16 MB VRAM, it just acts a bit better with it. In any case, you might want to argue a price of about 500 for the iBook and the complete RAM upgrade (so look for the price of a RAM upgrade and offer the rest of the 500$ for the book), and maybe a HD upgrade too. Is it a 12" screen? That'd knock some more $ off the price.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    I think it would do pretty badly. You should probably stick with OS 9 on that machine unless you really need OS X for something. If you're using it as a "second" machine that would be mainly for word processing and stuff, then OS 9 should be fine and it won't frustrate you with slowness the way OS X would. Also, if you get OS 9, you'll really only need to buy a 256 MB module, raising the total RAM to 320 MB. You could get by with 192 MB (64+128), but it's nice to have a little more than necessary, especially since OS 9 manages it so poorly.



    Since it already includes an OS 9.1 CD, all you gotta do is install that and get going. You could update to 9.2.2 but it's actually not a big deal if you don't - OS 9.2 and onward is basically just updates to support for Classic mode, and many people find it buggy compared to 9.1.



    You could always try OS X but I don't think it's worth buying 10.3 for that machine. You say that later versions of OS X demand 16 MB of VRAM... that's somewhat true. They'll be faster than 10.1 on your machine even though it's not compatible with Quartz Extreme (which requires 16 MB and a Radeon or GeForce 2MX), but machines that are QE compatible will show a much larger performance gain than yours.



    Anyway, $300 sounds like a fair price. It depends on the condition of the battery of course. But the iBook's power adapter is pretty portable, so if you want to use it in coffee shops or something you shouldn't have a problem there, even if the battery is dead. Getting a dead battery would really suck though.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    rampancyrampancy Posts: 363member
    In addition to the fine points made here by many others, my main beef with the early white 500 MHz iBooks was their processor-crippling 66 Mhz bus speed. That's reason enough to stay away from the 500 Mhz 'books and look for the 600 Mhz+ models.



    If the battery was still in good condition I'd probably pay no more than $400-450. I'd agree that $300's a reasonable price.
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