A few weeks ago I rescued our old clamshell "Black Tie" iBook that had found a home in my daughter's closet.
The iBook was stored after the CD/DVD door had stuck open. After a few days tinkering with it, I got the door to close and it was whole once again. Apparently, my daughter had accidentially pulled the door out too far.
Satisfied of my handyman abilities, I began using the machine and was impressed how strong its Airport reception and battery life was compared to my 12-inch G4 PowerBook. What I wasn't happy with was the 9.0.4 operating system it was running. I continued to use the iBook and began to experience daily system crashes and reboots. Then I read an article on O'Grady's PowerPage about his installation of OS X on a Blueberry iBook. Up until then I never thought about installing OS X on the iBook, figuring it would run way too slow.
Well, to make a long story a bit shorter, O'Grady installed Tiger on his aging iBook, breathing life into the once fanciful iBook. I decided to try it too.
After updating OS 9 to 9.2.2, I went for the gold, installing OS 10.2.8 (I don't own Tiger). The installation when extremely well, and despite the limited 800 x 600 screen real estate, I have enjoyed every minute of the iBook since. What I have especially enjoyed is that it hasn't crashed once since the installation.
While not a screamer, the machine handles OS X better than I ever expected. What's more, I get to use the same updated OS X apps that my other Macs use, such as Word.
Apple did a good thing when it finally updated its aging OS 9 system with OS X. With the move to Intel chips, I figure more of the world will discover this world class operating system really soon.
OS X Continues to Impress
Friday, September 9, 2005 at 12:01 AM Posted by zxmacman
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10:21 AM
Ugh! Comment Spam...
I love my 500 Mhz ice iBook.
10.3 Panther is a lot faster on slower hardware, and G3's in general. The entire, you need 512 Meg of RAM for OS X is overhyped, I would absolutly recommend at least 128 for any flavor of OS X, and 256 if you(or the computer) can manage it. Because you(and most notebooks) have a slowish HD, you want to avoid as much disk swapping/virtual memory as you can, and more memory helps this, but it's such an integrated part of the OS that there is always swapping.
The clamshell iBooks don't have firewire right? that would let you easily upgrade the HD, AND add a working CD-R or DVD drive... ah well.
Keep on trucking with that iBook, I always liked the design.
There is so much cool technology in OS X, from the iApps to the open source internet server technology... OS X really blows OS 9 away.
5:34 PM
The iBook actually has Firewire, but it has been blown for some time. USB still works however, so I can hook it up to my dual Firewire/USB external hard drive.
The machine has 320 megs of ram and a 10 gig hard drive which still has 4 gigs free.
I must admit, it's great to have another laptop around running OS X!
5:47 PM
I did the same install on a blueberry clamshell about 3 weeks ago. I have 320 megs ram but only a 3GB HD, so things are tight. Obviously no classic was installed, but it is fun to use OSX on this hardware!