OS X Continues to Impress

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.