OS 10.2.3 on iBook

[Jay Boshara]

Francine:

I concur with the others: OS 10.2.3 on the 366 graphite iBook SE runs fine.
It is significantly slower than OS 9 (maybe 20-25% slower), but I¹ve gotten
used to it.  Also, it's much more stable than OS 9.  Mine hasn't crashed at
all under Jaguar.  Others have said that 192 MB of RAM is sufficient, but
that's what I had before I maxed it out at 320, and the additional MBs
boosted the speed noticeably.  However, 320 MB is probably the most you will
need, and I doubt you will get any improvement in speed by adding more than
320, so no need to get a 512 chip (especially since a 512 is twice as
expensive as a 256, and some have said that more than 320 uses too much
electricity and reduces battery life significantly).  I found a 256 MB chip
for $45.

One thing though: I do not consider it worthwhile to put a new hard drive or
CD-RW drive in this computer because all the other hardware on this iBook is
old and slow -- 66 MHz system bus, crappy 4 MB ATI graphics card (which does
not make use of Quartz Extreme), etc. -- so spending a lot to upgrade the
drives is a waste of money because: 1) any speed improvement from a faster
drive will be negated by the 66 MHz system bus bottleneck; and 2) you'll
almost certainly want a new laptop in a year or two (because your current
one is so slow), so why spend more money on this one?  Trust me on that last
point -- I love OS X, but it's so slow, and the 12.1" LCD screen is so
undersized in OS X (with 800x600 resolution, everything is bigger than it
was under OS 9, therefore there is less useable screen space) that I cannot
wait to buy a new laptop (at least a 15").  But alas, I cannot justify the
expense at present, so I will wait and hope that Apple releases a G5 within
the year (I know, wishful thinking).

Another thing: the 6 GB drive (actually 5.6 GB) is too small to install both
OS 9 and 10 and still have room for apps.  I did this before, and there was
only 1 GB of free space left after installing MS Office and a couple of
browsers.  So, when I got Jaguar, I zeroed out my HD and clean installed
Jaguar (I strongly recommend a clean install) without installing OS 9.  With
all my applications on it I have around 2.5-3 GB of free space, which is
sufficient for my purposes.  However, this means you must invest in new OS
X-native apps if you don't already have them.  If you have any other
questions about this, feel free to contact me off-list.

Good Luck,
Jay Boshara.