Advice Needed

krisnephkrisneph
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I need some advice, a friend a mine (Youth Minister) has a very old Mac that was donated to him and wants to put it to work. If I recall correctly it's a Power PC it has like 48MB of RAM , CD-ROM and an Ethernet port in the back. It's running OS 8, he want's me to clean it out for him. He just wants to be able to use Word and Excel.



Can I install OS 9 on this ?



Is this machine gonna handle basic word processing and spreadsheets ?



I already has Word but I need Excel do you think I can get it on Ebay ?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    billybobskybillybobsky Posts: 1,914member
    OS 9!?!



    Can that thing even run 8?!?!
  • Reply 2 of 5
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Sounds like an okay computer. It'll never be a speed demon, but it will still run OS 8 pretty well. I wouldn't move to OS 9 unless you get more RAM - I'd say 72 MB or more for OS 9.



    If you can find the specific model number, that'll help a lot. It'll be something like 7600/120, 9500/180, something like that. Find that out and it'll tell us quite a bit more. Also, find out which version of OS 8 it has. There's 8.0, 8.1, 8.5, 8.5.1, and 8.6. 8.6 is probably the best, but 8.1 would also be okay if you're worried about performance.



    You should be able to find a copy of MS Office 2001 that will work on eBay, or perhaps a retailer like Amazon. If compatibility isn't essential (i.e. all he needs to do is create documents, not share with any Windows machines), a much cheaper option is to use ClarisWorks. Version 4 is great and was included with many older Macs, so he may already have it. However, if he wants to read files that other people give him, or write files that others will be seeing, he'll have to get Word and Excel.



    A good thing about these old Macs is that there are components for them all over the place for really cheap. If it's, say, an 8500/120, it has a 120 MHz processor that can be replaced with a 200 MHz one for under $20. Most of these old machines also have at least 4 RAM slots (many have 8 and some even have 12), so there is usually room for more RAM without having to get rid of the older modules.



    Good luck!
  • Reply 3 of 5
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    oh man! uhh.... i say go with a refurb emac if you can...
  • Reply 4 of 5
    padishahpadishah Posts: 5member
    how bout giving him a donation of any PC i dont know a pc that cant word process or run spreadsheets
  • Reply 5 of 5
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Padishah

    how bout giving him a donation of any PC i dont know a pc that cant word process or run spreadsheets



    look back 10 years and you'll find plenty(that can't run modern day word and spreadsheets)
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