switching to os 9?

[pzler]

hey,

my newest mac is a G3 233mhz imac running os X

i'm thinking about switching to os 9 to improve the speed.

can anyone tell me how much this will increase the speed of my old imac and what things i can't do with os 9 that i can do with os X so that ill know if it is worth the effort.

 

[II2II]

The speed difference will depend upon a variety of factors. If your computer is RAM starved under OS X but not under OS 9, it will be slower with OS X. On the other hand, if it is RAM starved under OS 9 it may be faster under OS X because OS X has a better virtual memory subsystem. In all likelyhood, hard disk performance will be better under OS X as well. In all likelyhood graphics will be slower, though I seem to recall some mention of disabling special effects.

Any class of software that has changed dramatically over the past five years (such as web browsers) will be lacking under OS 9. But let's face it, most of the productivity applications out there have not changed dramatically over the span of a decade.

 

[luddite]

I've found OS X is quite a bit faster for daily use, though all of my G3s are upgraded in the RAM department.

 

[MultiFinder]

If your iMac has under 128 megs of RAM or so, you'll find it faster. However, realize that you're getting back into a VERY browser-limited OS. Just an FYI. Other than that whole browser issue, I love OS 9.

 

[The Macster]

If your computer is RAM starved under OS X but not under OS 9, it will be slower with OS X. On the other hand, if it is RAM starved under OS 9 it may be faster under OS X because OS X has a better virtual memory subsystem.

Except that if it's Ram-starved under OS9 then it's got so little Ram that OS X will probably not even run

The best thing is probably to upgrade your Ram to 384 or 512 MB and run either Panther or Tiger. OS 9 is OK, but tends to lock up quite a bit (or at least in my experience) and there is the issue of browsers as already mentioned. X should perform reasonably well as long as you have a sizeable amount of Ram, although of course with the iMac you are limited by the built-in video card.

 

[Unknown_K]

Well if the Imac is not your main machine I would recommend OS 9. A g3-233 with low memory is not exactly a good machine for OSX but should be speedy enough for OS 9.

I think the browser limitations only matter if you do not have another machine to do the heavy internet work. Still with IE5 or icab I can browse the web ok using a Beige g3-300 with 768MB of RAM when I need something.

 

[Sludgedragon]

I don't know about being limited with OS 9. I use it all the time on my Lombard with 9.2 and Wamcom Mozilla, with a wireless card. I find it was much more limiting to be on dialup rather than DSL, than the Lombard versus the iMac G5 with Tiger. I have not found 9 to be buggy or prone to locking up at all, and I like it because I can use my Airport to run the wireless card. In X it won't work without a driver that costs money. I even have the older versions of iTunes and iMovie in case I want to use them.

And if there is anything you haven't been able to do because Classic won't run it, then you have 9 for that. Or, partition it and made it dual-boot! Then you can really compare. ;D

 

[tomlee59]

Depending on what sort of things you do with your Mac, you may find the absence of certain apps in one OS or the other to be frustrating. If you like to do any amount of work with video, for example, you'll find OS X to be a much better fit. Lots of freeware/shareware to do capture and conversion in X, far fewer options in 9. And VLC only runs in X.

Sludgedragon's suggestion of installing both is a really good one. Then you don't have to make an either-or decision. With a big enough hard disk, you can have both, giving you the ability to use whatever software gets the job done the best/cheapest.

 

[pzler]

well i put the imac at my parents house and i use it when i'm staying there, that way i don't have to drag my laptop with me. so it's not my main machine.

the things i use it for are a bit of browsing, email, instant messaging, irc and word processing.

 

[JWG Design]

pzler: The Interface speed of Mac OS 9 should feel much snappier than OS X. The drawback is that multitasking is not as refined. If it takes 30 seconds for Photoshop to launch, you have to wait the full 30 seconds in 9. In X, you can switch to another program while Photoshop launches in the background.

If you have older versions of apps that coincide with OS 9, then they should run just fine. It seems like each new version of Photoshop or MS-Word gets slower and slower - requiring a faster computer to do the same old tasks.

Mozilla 1.3.1 (an unofficial release) runs rather well on Mac OS 9, and is newer than Netscape 7. I recommend iCab 3.0.3 as it works well, is fast, and has some nifty features.

Sludgedragon: I have a Wallstreet with a WaveLAN Gold WiFi card. The card worked just fine with Apple's AirPort driver in 9.2. I too looked into the commercial drivers for OS X, but ended up finding a free driver at SourceForge. The description mentioned Jaguar, but it seems to work just fine in Panther. Of course, it isn't nearly as refined as Apple's drivers, but it is FREE.

tomlee: Older versions of iMovie work surprisingly well on older, slower computers running OS 9. I had to use iMovie on a 120MHz PowerMac 8500 once. It captured the video from my MiniDV camcorder just fine, where Premiere 6 on my 9600 (with 700MHz G4 card) would drop frames during capture. I ended up doing the project in Premiere, but then exporting back to tape from iMovie on the 8500.

 

[tomlee59]

That's great news about iMovie working fine in an 8500 running OS9! I'll have to give that a go sometime.