OS 9 v. OS X

I would like to hear from anyone who has made the transition from OS 9 to OS X.

Do you find X sluggish? What are your hardware specs? What do you think is the minimum to run X? What has your experience with X been versus 9?

OS X definitely requires more real estate in terms of RAM and HD space to allow for the eye candy, bells and whistles, etc. OS X takes a while to get used to, and there are still some features I miss from OS 9 (navigational features in the Finder, the Control Strip, etc.), but all in all, OS X is a MUCH more powerful system and its UNIX underpinnings make it very stable and fairly secure. However, do not expect OS X to run in a usable fashion on a G3. At least a G4 with decent megahertz (I'd say at least 400) would be advisable.

Feel free to ask any other more specific questions. I love talking about this stuff. For I am nerdly.

I have a blue and white G3 450 mhz, 384 MB RAM, with a Seagate 100 GB internal drive that I installed, Zip drive, CD-ROM. External modem. Macsense (clacky) keyboard and Logitech two button optical mouse, 17" Mitsubishi CRT, HP 812 deskjet.

There are a few reasons I am considering the change:

1) Better internet experience -- WamCom 1.3.1 does a fine job but some sites still don't render properly. Some are unreadable because the text is off the left side of the screen. Some sites require a version of Flash that I don't have. I know that Microsoft practically owns the web, but I was hoping that Safari or Firefox would give me a better internet experience. Also, no printing of web pages with WaMCom -- have to use IE, which is so slow.

2) Garage Band. Need I say more.

3) Ipod. Need I say more.

4) Nicecast looks very cool.

5) Ability to burn CDs.

6) Ability to edit home movies and burn them from videotape to DVD.

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I'm trying to spend as little as possible. First, 500 was my limit, now it is probably 800. I have to stay under 1000. I could:

1) Buy a processor upgrade card for my G3

2) Buy a mini.

3) Buy a used G4 (imac or powermac)

4) Buy a used G5 (imac or powermac)

I like the drawbridge design of my G3. I don't want to be limited by a slow hard drive or difficulty getting inside to add RAM or whatnot. The mini and imacs look physically restrictive as far as upgrading. Some of the G4s were slighted for noise, some of the G5s for heat.

I'm not interested in Intel. I want to keep my OS 9 stuff.

Does the Intel move totally kill OS9 software?

I think so. No Intel machine is able to run 9 or Classic.

Also, we are in the early days of Intel Macs. There is always a shakedown period with early models.

OSX is vastly, vastly superior, in my opinion. But then, my hatred for OS9 exceeds my ability to express in words.

I don't have any experience with upgrading, so you should probably ignore me, but do you know what version of OSX you'd be considering upgrading to? I don't know whether you'd stand a chance of upgrading to a place where you could run Leopard, but if so, that might be worth waiting a little while for.

If I had to guess, though, I'd think that a G5 would have the best combination of backward and forward compatibility in terms of having power to run new OSX versions and software and also old OS9 programs you may want to keep around and also being big enough to reach in and mess around....

Oh, say it ain't so. I loved OS9. I still miss the save dialogue boxes. I never got used to OS10's, on account of which all my files are in my documents folder or on my desktop. (Now I wish I could tag them.)

I favor getting a new machine. Reduce hassle. If you use your computer to any degree, it will pay for itself.

Some of OS9's GUI elements just didn't work for me, much of which doubtless falls into the "no accounting for taste" domain; there were also stability and/or speed issues on all the OS9 machines I ever worked on, although I just had to wipe my hard drive and re-install OSX for reasons that are frankly mysterious, so maybe I shouldn't talk.... :)

Also, OS9's poor unicode support really, really bugged me -- especially when I tried to send my OS9-using friend some fragment or other of Sanskrit homework and got the inevitable response of, "Sorry, it's just a lot of question marks." It really was too bad, because my handwriting in Devanagari is even worse than my handwriting in English.

I won't dispute the stability problem, and I love the true multitasking that OS X has, but I mean come on...

Voice Login...SO awesome
pop-up folders
click and a half to travel through folders
a smaller GUI fingerprint
less bloat from eye candy

I like the eye candy, but it does slow down a decent machine. Anyway, there really is no accounting for taste, but like tim, I am disappointed that they couldn't do some awesome emulation-within-emulation to get classic to work. Hopefully a good OS 9 emulator for OS X will appear on the scene. I'd totally throw down a few bucks to buy that.

Ooh, and the most important thing OS 9 had were years and years worth of legacy games. I'm thinking of Pillars of Garendall, Harry the Handsome Executive (SO GOOD!), the old sim cities...sigh. I

just bought a new computer, upping my PowerBook G4 800 MHz to a MacBook Pro (still hate that name) Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz. I'm seriously thinking about making my old machine just an OS 9 only Mac for all my nostalgic purposes.