>Gouge the customers with high prices, force them to upgrade with no simple backward compatibility path, Apple ][ --> Mac, 5" floppy -> 3 1/2 floppy, SCSI -> USB, anyone?<
Piling on, no? $1600 for a G3 300 with USB and FireWire is pretty reasonable.
Actually this has driven down the price of fast and wide SCSI cards from $300+ to $105.
If you still need a 5" floppy, I'm sure we can work something out.
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Doren,
Overall, a good post but a somewhat flawed premise. IMO, it does *not* make sense to upgrade unless you're getting a performance pop of at least 100%.
If FPU is what you need, then yes -- wait for the G4. But note the 300/G3 sells for $1600 -- or 40% less than the 9600. For the 10% more you can get the 400 mhz.
Try Explorer 4.X with MRJ 2.1 (or iCab, which is neat) and report back. Currently, I'm running those as well as Communicator.
I try to dissaude people from purchasing internal Zips for the same reason. Because bad cartridges ruin drives, I would *particularly* disrecommend them in a lab environment.
You shouldn't upgrade, considering what you're upgrading from. I sold a pair of 300mhz G3s yesterday. Both to couples who will be running Photoshop and MS Office. Both were upgrading from PPC 601s. That means a MacBench score increase from 125 to over 1000. Both are getting internal Apple modems ($139); one is getting a DVD and the other an Adaptec f/w SCSI ($105) for use with Jaz and scanner.
[BTW, Both couples are fixing up the older units and giving them to family members as home office/internet stations.]
>IDE drives are a less robust standard than SCSI -- back up early and often.
[That 400mhz machine for $3000 also comes with the 9G LVD drive and capacity for (3) IBM 36G drives.]
USB is meant to replace ADB and Serial. Firewire is designed to replace SCSI.
Overall, the people who *should* be upgrading are those with 5 year old first-generation PPCs where the performance increase is 500-1000%.
People who do their homework and have reasonable expectations are getting good value. They will likely own these machines for as long as the ones they replaced.
PS> I'm piggybacking this because when I tried to reply directly to Doren's post, it breaks my connection (!?)
PPS> When I deleted Doren's orginal comments it seems to take OK. |
