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Recent Columns - John H Farr
• Photoshop Elements 8 - Review
Wednesday, 01/20/10
• Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Review
Thursday, 06/18/09
• Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection - First Look
Monday, 12/01/08
• Drive Genius 2 - Review
Monday, 07/21/08
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design - Book Review
Monday, 11/12/07
Recent Blogs - John H Farr
• The Great iMac Adventure, Part III
Thursday, 07/02/09
• The Great iMac Adventure, Part II
Sunday, 05/31/09
• The Great iMac Adventure, Part I
Friday, 05/22/09
• New iMacs, Minis Tomorrow
Monday, 03/02/09
• iPhone Roaming Bug with AT&T?
Friday, 02/27/09
Archive - John H Farr
• 2006
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• 2003
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The Fastest Mac in the World, Part II
John H Farr
Columnist
Saturday, 12/09/06
[Note: Confused? You may need to go back and read Part I. Don't worry, it's kinda fun.]
My poor client... you have to picture this: she has a brand new MacBook, but she's been designing and printing all the labels for her line of herbal products on an ancient Performa using Clarisworks. Urk! Obviously this is okay, even if it has me rolling my eyes, so long as the old Mac works. She also just hired a new assistant, and she wants to keep the assistant out of her office space, and she doesn't want to let the assistant use the MacBook. This means she'd like the assistant to take over label-making duty on the (ugh) Performa. And of course, when we last looked in on this scene, I couldn't even get the Performa to boot.
Aarghh.
Well, my first brilliant idea was to just sell her my old PowerMac 8600 and toss the Performa. What a perfect solution! But first I had to go extract the 8600 and one of three monitors sitting in the storage unit, gather up all my old SCSI gear and OS 9 software, set the whole mess up on the dining room table, and erase all my personal data. Whew. (Pant, pant...)
Okay, I did that. Boy, do I hate that storage unit, but I did that. It's already been 13 below zero here, so I had to let the hardware warm up first. ("Gee, what a nice computer.") And guess what? When I finally powered up, it worked perfectly. Everything worked, and worked so well...
The 8600 had a lot of RAM, 648 MB maybe, and a 450 MHz G3 upgrade. That much RAM makes OS 9 shoot for the stars, too. It was unspeakably fast. Yes, noticeably snappier in the Finder than the 1.83 GHz MacBook with two gigs of RAM that I'm typing this on now. As far as I was concerned, it was The Fastest Mac in the World, hands down. What's more, it had every conceivable piece of software on it. Tons of stuff, and everything ran like it was new. When I started trashing files and apps, I felt really sad, and so I stopped. In fact, the only thing I got rid of was Claris Emailer. So?
Yup. You guessed it. No way was I going to let this thing go. Some day I'd have room for it on my work table, and then I could ... um ... well, I could do stuff on it. You know, things like ... uh... well, hell, it even had 3-D apps on it, and I could still use the old Wacom drawing tablet with it. And, and... I LIKED it. And it was so ridiculously fast. I mean, I could sell tickets or something. ("See? See?? Want to close a window? WHAM! Hit the pull down menu? WHAM!")
I was on a roll, launching apps and reliving old glories. (WHAM!) Oh, what fun. Except... oh no... except that now I would have to get that poor old Performa up and running after all, or at least pull the documents off the hard drive, and then I'd have to present the client with a sensible plan. I wanted to tell her "Mac mini," but so far, that was fantasy. Reality was a stone-cold Performa, and the lady had labels to print!
All right, now you know the secret of the Fastest Mac in the World. But the black comedy is just beginning. How did one rebuild a desktop, for example? I'd forgotten everything. I wanted to forget everything, but I had a duty to remember.
As I write this, the 8600 is neither back in the storage unit nor in my client's office. No, it's still sitting in my truck outside. What does this mean? Will the Fastest Mac in the World end up as a lowly label-producing unit after all? Will the Performa end up in an arroyo overnight? Will I have the nerve to tell my client she has to spend another thousand bucks?
We shall see.
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Holy heartbreak Batman!
WILL John give up his new/old 8600 to a client that need it?
WILL John STOP just opening and closing windows to see how fast a severely upgraded machine will run OS 9?
WILL John come to his senses and realize that an OS 9 machine while fun to play with, has nothing on his dual-core OS X hardware?
Tune in again next week! Same Bat-time...same Bat-channel
Just kidding John. I've got an old 300 Mhz G3 desktop that I pull out every once in a while to see if it will still run Strata's VideoShop or Carmageddon and the original Driver game.
Posted by Guy Serle
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What's really sad is how many machines I have in my office, ready to go, but most of the time sit idle or off. The only two machines I REALLY use every day are the PowerMac G5 and the MacBook Pro. The DP500 G4 is connected, and has important backup info on it, but has not actually booted up in a few months. The Mac mini (G4 kind) is sitting on a shelf, and gets booted up once a month to act as a backup for my iPhoto collection of pictures. There is also a PowerBook G4 (1GHz, 1.5GB, fast and great machine) sitting on my desk that only has Ubuntu on it, waiting for me to get more interest in Linux and play with it.
What I SHOULD do is pack up the DP500, reinstall OS X on the PowerBook, and sell both. Will I? Maybe... But they are worth more to me than what I could possibly sell them for, you know?
Posted by Tim Robertson
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Someimes you just have to let go.....
Posted by Donny Yankellow
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All gibes are VERY MUCH deserved and Donny is the most correct of all. :-) On the other hand, "correct" sometimes loses out to passion, however misplaced. This story is ongoing and as I said, we shall see.
If I gave the 8600 to the client -- and it's just not worth that much, maybe twenty bucks -- her workflow would remain uninterrupted during this busy season. She doesn't really need another new Mac because her assistant hardly knows anything anyway.
Ah, but first the tale resuscitating the Performa.
I think Donny is going to prove the wisest of all, however.
Posted by John H Farr
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I'm always tempted to hold on to old macs once I've got a new one but then I think "Hey, someone could be doing something useful with that" and I feel kinda guilty. So all my old computers go to someone who will use them. On the other hand, every couple of months I think "crap, I wish I had that Mac classic..."
Posted by Chris Seibold
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John . . .
CLEAN UP YOUR ROOM!
Don't make me come in there and start throwing things away!
--Knotty
Posted by Knot Gullible
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The fastest Mac I ever saw was a IIfx with a bunch of RAM (64 MB, IIRC) and an upgraded hard disk. It booted System 6 in about 8 seconds. It was still handling office chores in the late 90's.
Posted by ottojschlosser
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