[dschmaus]

I have three boys, 5,7 and 10 and was thinking about getting 3 G3 imacs for each of them... Should be able to get them for around 175 each including shipping... Basically this
http://cgi.ebay.com/iMac-Apple-G3-40...QQcmdZViewItem

I want them to be able to surf the web, watch dvds and buy a few games for them... Will these work??

[tooki]

Well, don't buy from that guy -- the pix are mostly of a 233MHz iMac (not capable of running Tiger), with one of the alleged item mixed in.

That said, I think you should be able to find 400MHz iMacs for well below your price.

As for capability:
DVD: check
web: check, with reservations (under OS X, browsers on a 400MHz G3 can get sluggish at times)
games: forgeddaboutit -- contemporary games require far more power than that.

tooki

[production_coordinator]

I just gave my sister a 350MHz iMac... it's nothing amazing, but for what she needs, email, web, a little surfing from time to time, it's perfect. If they need something more, I'll consider a mac mini upgrade.

[Captain Obvious]

Originally Posted by dschmaus

I have three boys, 5,7 and 10 and was thinking about getting 3 G3 imacs for each of them...

That's retarded.

Buy one Graphite G4 tower and maybe a B&W G3.
Both can run Tiger and cost less than or in the case of a G4 about $175.

What you want to do is make the G4 an OSX dedicated internet and DVD machine and the B&W an OS9 game machine. Most of the titles (esp Disney) for kids that age still run in OS9. If the games you buy run only in OSX then these machines would be underpowered for such a modern game meaning that your G3 iMac idea would fair even worse with it. Older educational game titles aren't so processor or graphic intensive that a 450MHz G3 with 512 of RAM and a 16Mb video card would have trouble powering them. If you want them playing something on the level of Grand Theft Auto then get them a PS2.

3 children do not each need their own computer unless they are in Jr High, HS, or college and even then two would suffice if they all live at home. One is practically still a toddler so he definitely doesn't need his own computer since he can share with his siblings. You are making a mistake in buying so many dated computers all at once. The computers you are looking at do not have the room to expand as the needs of the children grow with their age and they are not going to fair well as time goes on and the parts to fix those things get harder to find.

If you insist on a gumdrop iMac get one of the last ones made that were 600 or 700MHz G3s

[tooki]

The iMacs he's looking at do run Tiger, since they have FireWire, and are in fact faster machines than a B&W G3.

tooki

[Captain Obvious]

Originally Posted by tooki

and are in fact faster machines than a B&W G3.

tooki

400 MHz / 8Mb unupgradable video -vs- 350-450 (over-clockable) rev.2's with larger L2/ 16 Mb upgradable video which will cost less

How is the iMac faster?

[Mojo]

That's retarded.

Kindly don't take that insensitive comment personally. A quick perusal of Captain Oblivious' past forum posts indicate a pattern of online boorishness.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Captain Obvious

400 MHz / 8Mb unupgradable video -vs- 350-450 (over-clockable) rev.2's with larger L2/ 16 Mb upgradable video which will cost less

How is the iMac faster?

Because the B&W's have an older architecture and PCI-based graphics. The iMacs have a newer, more efficient AGP-based architecture.

tooki

[mduell]

Originally Posted by tooki

Because the B&W's have an older architecture and PCI-based graphics. The iMacs have a newer, more efficient AGP-based architecture.

With a graphics chip that slow (Rage 128 for all the G3 iMacs), does it really matter?

[P]

The G3 iMacs have a more modern chipset, yes, and I believe the latency for certain operations may be slightly lower. The more modern version of the G3 in those models (3.0 vs. 2.2 or 2.3 in the Powermacs) also include several fixes for early bugs that impair performance, as well as being more overclockable (although you'd need active cooling over more than 100 MHz boost or so). I still doubt that the iMacs are faster, though: the L2 cache is smaller and slower at a ratio of 5:2 to the CPU, not 2:1 as the Powermacs, and the Rage 128 chip is limited by its small 8MB RAM and its crippled 64bit internal memory bus.

In general, though, I think that the differences are extremely tiny and not noticeable in general operation. The graphics limitation is only relevant for 3D games, and there are few modern games that run acceptably anyway (although Deus Ex does work). The L2 cache can help some, but the speed is just a software setting and there are freebies to safely overclock it. 1 MB or 512k isn't all that when it's backside and not on chip - best case it's twice as fast as RAM.

The one big difference is that the iMac is truly quiet - except when the optical drive is working. That is worth more to me than a few percent performance advantage.

[tooki]

Trust me, the AGP Macs are snappier. My Pismo (400MHz, 8MB Rage Mobility 128) is snappier than my B&W, despite nearly identical specs.

tooki

[P]

Some googling seems to indicate that 2D graphics performance and sustained disk transfer rate are higher for the iMacs, while other benchmarks are similar except for a CPU peak from the 1 MB L2 cache.

[osxrules]

I'd say that you'd be better getting one fast machine and set up multiple accounts. That will also teach them how to share. My Dad decided one Christmas to get my brother and I a handheld games machine each. At the time, the in-thing was the gameboy. My brother and I both understood that our Dad probably wouldn't have that much money to spend on us so we agreed we would be happy with one gameboy between us. Imagine our excitement when instead we both got a piece of japanese no-name crappy games machine (that was half the price of the gameboy so we could have got one) that you couldn't buy games for anywhere and any games you did find were also crappy.

Get a Mac Mini with 1GB Ram.