Article:		The Disaster-Free Upgrade to Mac OS X
Subject:		But.... what's it really like?
Date:		2001-05-02 11:43:51
From:		pisej5
Having the "Lombard" vintage of a G3 PowerBook with iTunes already installed and an Acrobat license, I'm left with wow #1 to convince me of doing the upgrade. But I would have liked to know performance is compared to running OS 9.1: Is there more disk activity, which to me is a significant issue, given the rather slow disks in this type of PowerBook? Does it take forever to launch an application? On my B/W G3 everything runs ever so slowly, launching apps takes forever, response times for mouse clicks are measured in seconds and the disk churns endlessly (it's a 6 GB disk and we have 192 MB RAM to waddle in). It is very much reminiscent of the situation 10 years ago, switching from System 6 to System 7 - everything slowed perceptibly down, the API doubled in complexity and most of the promised functionality very poorly implemented (publish and subscribe, remember that, eh?). I know this sounds morosely, but you have to make a better case for upgrading if you want to convince me. As you state, ones PowerBook is not a toy and unless I get real productivity gains, I'll hold back. Piet.

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• But.... what's it really like?
  2001-05-02 13:22:57  Derrick Story | [Reply | View]
  
  
  I think your points are excellent. The decision isn't really whether or not to upgrade; rather, to upgrade now or later.
  
  I think you have built a good argument to upgrade later. Why do I say that?
  
  1) The speed, if anything, is a bit slower on Mac OS X right now -- especially on older machines. But that will change.
  
  2) You don't have AirPort.
  
  3) Chances are your hard drive is too small to partition it to maintain two complete OSs and their associated apps, and you probably don't want to invest in a new drive for an older machine -- no dis on your Lombard; they are great!
  
  4) Most likely you would spend most of your time in the OS 9 partition anyway, based on how you described the way you use your PowerBook.
  
  So, looks to me like your decision to sit tight for a bit is a good one. It will be harder to do so, however, later this year when we see more refined versions of Mac OS X and lots more apps to run on it.
  
  You might want to start budgeting now ...