[Misha]

After the number of various problems users report with OS 9, I just wanted to let skeptics (and others) know that OS 9 is very stable. I had a few quirks in the first few days of use, but after reformatting my HD and installing the OS fresh, my PowerBook G3/400 has crashed three times in the last two weeks... incredible. And those crashes were all in Photoshop 3.0.5 (hey, I like the old school!) which I use from time to time since I can do a few things faster with it than 5.5. I'm not even sure you can qualify a crash in 5 year old application on a 1 month old OS as a "crash"... "stupidity" might better describe it.

In any case, OS 9 stability is awesome... I'm still uncertain whether the other 49 new "features" are worth the upgrade cost, but if you do go with it, you won't be dissapointed... or at least not /too/ much!

------------------
Misha Sakellaropoulo
Senior Editor, MacNN
iMac2Day, iBook2Day

Agreed! I've had only a few problems. The only software that stopped working was Stuffit Deluxe and NU. I'll update soon. The OS seems faster and more stable.
-joe-

OS 9 is stable but not as fast as 8.6 on my 8100/G3 accelerated. Perhaps Sonnet has to update the Crescendo driver and VillageTronic has to update the Sonata Graphics driver. (the slowdown is noticeable, even without a benchtest & I did a clean install). But it is also possible that OS 9 is not optimized for the first generation PowerMacs.
I wouldn't recommended it on a 601 or 603 PowerMac or on a Mac with less than 48 MB RAM... I hope that all problems will be fixed in OS 9.1... (8.6 was also better than 8.5...)

I also am very pleased with Mac OS 9. Regarding speed of execution, however, I have to say that at least on my setup (B/W 450 MHz G3, 384 MB RAM, VM off), OS 9 *seems* to be noticeably a little faster than 8.6. This observation may or may not be an accurate reflection of the situation--I have not run any benchmarks to find out if it is correct--but FWIW, my gut feeling about it is that OS 9 is faster in my environment than OS 8.6.

[iomatic]

Hmmm. Crashes here. All the time.

Usually occurring with IE 4.5 + OE5. No clean install of OS 9. iMac DV SE. Needless to say, I'm now running with Communicator 4.7, AIM stuff turned off.

That OpenGL-conflict-with-IE post (rumor?) sounds strange. Maybe I'll try to turn the GL drivers off. How will this affect gaming? Anyone? Q3Test? Unreal?

thx,
j

[QuatermassX]

The OpenGL bug really does seem to be cured with OS9 and the new 1.1.2 drivers really do seem to have worked wonders for my IE blues. Not sure if it helps, but I also got the latest build of IE (from MS's web site) and installed the 128-bit encryption patch for IE/OE.

Just my experience :-)

I have mac os 9 clean-installed on an iMac DV and on a 6300 w/ 32Mb ram. Both seem noticeable faster than 8.6. On the iMac, memory usage went down to 20.5Mb. On the 6300, memory usage went up from 7Mb (8.6) to 8.5Mb. VM is on for both machines.

If you disable all the extensions in os9 that were not available before the update, then memory usage is pretty much the same (with VM on), and speed and stability is better.

If you chose to leave all or most of the new extensions on, then, not surprisingly, os9 will use more memory and may be a little slower.

[typoon]

I've had seen great stability in Mac OS 9 I did experience a finder that was getting corrupted. It was reverting everything back to defaults. I luckily made a copy of the finder after my Clean install and deleted my old finder and replaced with the new one and now OS 9 is working fast and stable again.

Well I personally wouldn't say that OS9 stability is superb even if I get one crash per week. I would say that stability is good when your OS crashes max once a month or so. The other day I switched the appletalk port and *crash*. I usually get a few crashes per week with OS9 and thats still way too much. I just hope OSX will change this, not likely in the beginning but in the long term maybe...

stability is great here. I like the new features in os 9 however I really don't like the slowdown it causes (i.e. switching applicatins takes longer) so I overclocked my backside cache using the PowerLogix G3 Cache Profiler which has brought the speed of my system to that of 8.6.

[pete]

Speed, stability and general smoothness are all great here. I've had OS9 installed for several weeks now and have not experienced a single crash! With 8.6 I'd have probably 1-2/week. THe upgrade was the smoothest I've ever experienced, took about 20 minutes before I was up and running again. Is it worth the money? not really but it's almost Christmas so why not? It's certainly a nice upgrade. I feel more confident than ever in the Macos future and Apple's future. If just more people could recognize how nice the Mac is to use compared with Windows 95/98......I would hardly say it superior in terms of speed etc, but much less trouble and A FEELING of friendliness....that's worth a lot.

I tested OS 9.0 on a beige G3 minitower and its runs great and is a little faster than OS 8.6 on this computer. (This wasn't the case on my 8100 G3).
OS 9.1 will be a better system than 8.6.
(But I loved 8.6)

No crash in weeks here.

8.6 was rock solid, OS 9 is now rock solid on my systems. It took a little bit to figure out the kinks, but now I won't go back. I have an old school 8500 with a Railgun 325 G3 card, it really smokes with 9 !

[mkg]

After removing all Microsoft Internet Libraries from the System folder, removing ie and oe, 9 hasn't experienced a crash in WEEKS, under very heavy use. I am very pleased.