Someone should get this!

[TechEdison]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-10-Apple-iBook-G3-M8758LL-A-Laptops-12-1-G3-800GHz-256MB-30GB-HDD-A1005/232944524657?hash=item363c935d71:g:X0oAAOSwuMZbhbKh:sc:FedExHomeDelivery!03431!US!-1

10 iBook G3s with mid specs. Around $130. Someone could buy the lot and sell for $30 a piece no problem and make a small profit.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

If I didn't already have a fair number of iBooks I'd probably jump on this. 

At some point in the future people are going to be nostalgic about these given how many kids used them in school (like the LCs and Performas before them), it's just a matter of how long until that's the case.  Right now they're essentially cheap as free and would make a great first machine for someone getting in to PPC Macs.

 

[TechEdison]

It was my first experience with apple computers in general. Got mine when I was younger with not a lot of money and just wanted a laptop. It's seen better days at this point LOL. 

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

They're school units, they've all seen better days but at least one looks remarkably good in those pics. I've never been tempted to get an IceBook because of the appalling failure rate. Is a boot to password screen indicative of a unit that is reliable enough for use? Does a warm up period bring out the worst in these things?

 

[EvilCapitalist]

The iceBooks certainly had more than their fair share of trouble with motherboards and video cards desoldering themselves but at this point if it was going to fail I'll wager it would have done so already.  These certainly don't look as beaten up as school units usually do, since they still appear to have the little rubber stoppers at the top corners of the screen that always seemed to get ripped off like scabs.  These being the later opaque white plastic iBooks actually shows how little use these machines saw.  If they had heavy use you'd see discoloration on the case plastic on either side of the trackpad.

Booting to the OS X password screen doesn't guarantee that everything works, but getting there does mean you've cleared the worst failure points for the machine (no video, dead HD).  I haven't noticed the backlights on these being susceptible to the same sort of "need to warm up" period that the Pismos have.

 

[CC_333]

Those do actually look like they're in okay shape.

Time, space and money are in short supply at the moment, but I might be able to make this happen if there's enough interest. To that end, any interested parties can PM me an offer, and we'll go from there.

c

 

[Unknown_K]

These suck for OSX but they are OS 9 native and would run that very well. School machines would need some cleaning (especially the keyboards).

For some reason I got a couple G3 iBooks that had the trackpad cable rip off the motherboard (before I got them, dead trackpads, bad solder) which were a pain to strip and resolder. I can't recall if they were the 500mhz G3 or later models.

 

[PB145B]

I don’t think OS X is too bad on a G3, but that’s just my opinion. I’d probably do an OS 9/OS X dual boot on one of these.

I actually put Tiger on my one of my iMac G3s and it runs very good IMO. 

 

[sstaylor]

Someone did get this

They're a 2003 ibook, and for school units they are in amazing shape; they've apparently seen very little use and had very little software loaded.  I haven't examined them all, but those I have looked at are as nice as the one pictured, which to be honest surprised me.  I'm very pleased because while I do have a couple of iBooks in the collection, they're in terrible shape and/or in pieces.

I plan to hang on to them for a little while; current value isn't great but I expect it to go up.  But if someone is dying to get a G3/800 iBook, hit me up and we'll see if we can work something out.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Congrats!  Good to hear that they're all in nice shape.  If you haven't already, I'd pick up some NOS iBook batteries.  The well is going to run dry on the OEM versions soon I'd guess since the newest iBook is now ~13 years old.

 

[Unknown_K]

OEM batteries would be past their shelf life by now.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

They certainly should be, but the NOS ones I picked up last year seem to be doing just fine.  Getting several hours out of a charge versus several minutes out of the batteries my iBooks came with is a win in my book.