Foo - Uses for iMac G3?

What can I use a old iMac G3 with Mac OS 10 installed for nowadays?

Paper weight, boat anchor. Pretty much the same things a new Mac is good for.

If its running OS X then it should do most things you want of it. It will just be a little slow. It should work on the net just fine although you are limited to early versions of OS X so you won't be able to use the latest browsers. How much memory has it got? What kind of optical drive does it have? The very last of the G3 iMacs were reasonably well spec'd.

Regards, Anthony

If its running OS X then it should do most things you want of it. It will just be a little slow. It should work on the net just fine although you are limited to early versions of OS X so you won't be able to use the latest browsers. How much memory has it got? What kind of optical drive does it have? The very last of the G3 iMacs were reasonably well spec'd.

Regards, Anthony

DVD player, CD Burner, 500 mhz G3. 1/2 GB ram and 20GB HDD. I can't seem to install OS tiger on it so I'm stuck with 10.1

Nothing intensive, like photo or video editing, or game playing (which isn't a problem on OS X anyway).

It's fine for everything else. When I had mine, it was actually quite the adventure to try and modify. Landed up throwing it in the Trash (and I never do that with computers)>

I got the intel macbook for more intensive stuff. Can you install itunes 8 on the imac?

Give it to me...

Give it to me...

Are you really too cheap to pay $40 for the computer?

I have one that is my mom's email checker and word processor. Works fine!

I still use and love my G4 iBook, except that pesky GPU recall issue that Apple never fixed. It is actually the reason I will probably never buy Apple again. There was a recall on a known manufacturer issue, their fix for this recall was to place the faulty logic boards with new faulty logic boards. Then after a year or two of this, they wouldn't accept them any longer even though the same problem kept reoccurring.

Nothing a little electrical tape and a shim made from a CD can't sort of fix.

/rant

Don't know how many of them will work with Mac OSX, but here's a list of 12 ways to repurpose an old computer (http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/09/17/put-that-old-computer-to-good-use/).

One not listed: donate it to a school or charity.

I still have a 1999 imac 400mhz (the graphite colored one) that is running OSX 10.4.1 just fine. Yes, you can do photo editing and stuff on there if you have enough ram. You just have to have the patience that we did in 1999. This machine is mainly used by my kids for internet stuff, holding their audio files for their ipods, etc.

Of course we have two newer ibooks in the house as well but the old imac keeps on ticking. The only time it ever gets shut down or restarted is when I update software (every six months or so). My kids have used it for years and they know nothing about taking care of computers and still haven't killed it. Of course it's never gotten a virus (turn a couple of kids loose on a windows box and tell me how many days it takes them to get the thing totally ****ed up by a virus).

OH, just remembered: when upgrading a pre-OSX imac to OSX, you probably have to upgrade the firmware. I had to. Free download and whatnot on the apple website of course. If you don't update it, the monitor got all funky.

I still have a 1999 imac 400mhz (the graphite colored one) that is running OSX 10.4.1 just fine. Yes, you can do photo editing and stuff on there if you have enough ram. You just have to have the patience that we did in 1999. This machine is mainly used by my kids for internet stuff, holding their audio files for their ipods, etc.

No kidding. I mean, people forget that we were doing images, music, and video on these same computers. Nobody needs a 5 GHz monster with a terabyte of ram to make clips of home movies.

The cheap computers NOW are good enough to do atomic research; the $1500 computer of today is more capable than the $10K workstations of ten years ago. Video editing is old news.

10.4 is a rockin' OS. Put that on the ol' G3.

Mac + baseball bat = Apple sauce.

Do it.

Or, if you want to be constantly reminded that you've really wasted a perfectly fine, working computer --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarium
http://www.theapplecollection.com/Collection/MacAquarium/index.shtml
http://lowendmac.com/compact/macquarium.shtml

gut it, then stick in a mini-PC

I remember selling broken ones on ebay for $50~75 + S&H

downloading porn.

I have an emac I need to sort out when I have time. I'm hoping my mom will take it because all I need to do is install some new RAM, scrub the hard drive, and re-install the OS and then update it, find an Airport card on ebay. It's a 50 lb computer so it looks like I'll either build up some bicep muscle or tear them to shreds fixing it up. But it still works beautifully! I received a Macbook Pro for Christmas and use it much more than the behemoth.

DVD player, CD Burner, 500 mhz G3. 1/2 GB ram and 20GB HDD. I can't seem to install OS tiger on it so I'm stuck with 10.1

Its plenty powerful enough really. No you cant further update the OS. I forget the exact reason but the later versions of OS X need a feature that the G3 doesn't have so the current OS is as far as it will go. Take it for what it is, don't try and update software further and it will work.

Regards, Anthony

He should be able to update his 500 MHz iMac to 10.4.11, actually --

http://lowendmac.com/imacs/500-mhz-imac-g3-early-2001.html

iTunes 8 will work on 10.4.9 and newer, too.

I saw a first-generation, Bondi-blue, iMac smashed on the shoulder of a road in the Bay area a few weeks ago. Must've fallen out of a truck. It made me sad. I remember when those were brand new, with all of the "omg no floppy?!" controversy, and the "um, it's not beige?" confusion.

And yeah, a 500MHz G3 iMac with a boatload of RAM and OS X 10.4.x is still a useful computer, despite what the microchip companies, computer manufacturers, and bloatware OS designers would have you believe.

Are you really too cheap to pay $40 for the computer?

Yes.