Yes, 'tis true. I now own a G3. Specifically, a 300 MHz G3 with 192 MB RAM (for now). My old machine, the one I'm actually typing this on, is a Performa 6320 (120 MHz 603e with 64 MB RAM). It is a great machine and it served me well. It will now serve my sister well, having been relegated to her Snood-loving authority.
Having one of the most powerful desktop computers ever known to man at my fingertips, I wanted to impress all of my "not-yet-seen-the-light" PC friends (read last month's From the Desktop for the inside joke on this). I loaded up Virtual PC 2.01. I figured what the hell, I'll give it a shot. After experimenting with various control panel/extension sets and the Virtual PC preferences, I arrived at the fastest Virtual PC I've ever seen. In fact, it was the fastest PC I've ever seen.
So I set my Mac beside a Dell 300 MHz Pentium II with 128 MB RAM (Virtual PC had been given 128 MB as well). Let me tell you, the poor Dell couldn't keep up. Virtual PC — and remember this is emulation of Windows on a machine with the same clock speed — blew it away. Okay, it was about 10% faster. But again, that was in emulation! Internet Explorer loaded web pages faster (both modems were 56 kpbs) and Photoshop filters finished first. It went on and on. After I mopped the drool of my pals off of the floor, I demonstrated one other benefit: the easy, fold-out method in which the G3 minitower is constructed. It's a snap to add RAM to this thing!
What's the point? No, I'm not trying to brag (okay, maybe just a little). I'm simply stressing the speed of the modern PowerPC — that "Power" is in "PowerPC" for a reason.
Many of our readers have older Macs. Why? Because they work and it's difficult to justify another $3000 purchase. But let me implore you to at least consider the possibility. One of the reasons that Apple doesn't sell as many computers as a few higher-volume PC vendors is because Macs last for five, six, or more years — they work, and work well, at an age when a Wintel machine is best suited to life as a doorstop. But consider this: by purchasing a new G3, you'll:
• Help Apple
• Help yourself
• Impress your friends
Chances are, you won't need a new printer or monitor and all of your other peripherals will work, so you may be looking at a much slimmer purchase price than you might originally think.
Give it a week. Think about it. If you've got anything pre-G3, you too will be blown away. If you live near a CompUSA, check out the G3s on display if you don't believe me.
I'd be neglecting some sort of duty if I didn't mention that I got my G3 from Other World Computing at http://www.macsales.com/ and my 20" monitor (hey, I couldn't resist a monitor that came with an "ambient light wand") from Apple's online store at http://store.apple.com/ . With almost every available option in this machine, I spent a little over six grand.
  Erik J. Barzeski
erik@applewizards.net
 
 
Apple Seedlings News and Notes
As many of you may know, Apple Seedlings is a portion of Apple Wizards that publishes articles written by you, the Mac-using public. In the month of March we posted several great articles. We've listed them below with URLs and author credit as well as quotes from the article. Be sure to drop by Apple Seedlings at http://applewizards.net/seedlings/ or by the individual articles listed below. Also, be sure to send submissions to seedlings@applewizards.net .
A friend, who is a PC guru and bit of a Mac Basher, was over my house the other night. I always like to show him the latest techno wizardry I can squeeze out of my Quadra 650. Believe it or not, the four year old Quadra matches up much more closely to his one year old Pentium than to his three year old 486... Not that he'll admit it. Of course, the main difference between the Mac and the 486 is the Mac is in very active, daily service; the 486 currently resides next to old snow boots in the bottom of his hall closet.
Artificial intelligence. It's a pair of words that amassed a great deal of mystery in the late 80s. The U.S. was in the middle of the cold war with Russia, the economy was booming (or trickling), and people had little to do but speculate about exactly what our government was up to. With the advent of supercomputers, artificial intelligence became a real, or at least conceivable, possibility.
The lost look on his face told me he wasn't much into analogy. Either that or his iced moca-chino was giving him brain freeze. "I said you can't buy a Cadillac at a Yugo dealership." I slowed it down hoping he would catch it, he didn't. "You said the reason you never considered a Mac was because you can't get software for it. I said you're shopping at the wrong places."
What ever happened to bigger is better? The iMac could use a bigger set of genes with which to work. Component systems are where the market is at. Didn't they try this once already? And the whole industry took them apart. Upgradeability and compatibility are vital. This is just another one of those proprietarily Mac systems where only Apple stuff fits in the little holes.
I regarded the University of Texas' (UT) decision to standardize on Dell laptop computers running Windows NT with the same degree of morbid curiosity I would if a trench-coated stranger slid out of the shrubbery to announce that I was the result of experiments involving alien life forms. I mean, it could be true, but it would make sense only if I reordered my understanding of time and space.
At times, European Macintosh owners feel like ignored spectators on the progress of Apple - many of us are keenly interested but we feel our voices are too distant to be heard from this side of the pond. The recent release of the specifications of the iMac has made me sufficiently worried to need to shout.
I know this might sounds crazy at first, but before discarding the idea right away and clicking on the "Back" button of your browser, let me explain why I think this is worth doing.
Why? Because they are mentally deficient. Well, I don't believe that, but my experience at the elementary school my mother works for just made me scream. A teacher at the school is starting a new newspaper project for students to work on. Okay, so the school shelled out for a fabulous G3/266 tower that has QuarkXPress 4, Pagemaker 6.5, and much other software. After the machine arrived, this teacher announced that she wanted to do all of her work on a Windoze machine, since most of her kids had them at home.
After watching the Think Different spot in Seinfeld on 5/14, I can think of a lot more effective ways to have used the millions of bucks it took to get that spot into the show.
