Rev A or B, Your iMac's Still Good
April 30, 1999
It all began when someone left open a can of worms, but anyway, to add to The Daily iMac's recent feature article "Your iMac is Not Old! Upgrade Envy Gripes & Their Solutions", here are some more (hopefully) reassuring thoughts to calm the nerves of the early birds who caught the worms.
I'd like to share my personal experience, if I may. It may enlighten you to the reasons why I chose to buy a bondi blue iMac even months after the faster multi-flavored iMacs were debuted, and why I don't regret it in the least.
Forget Virtual Memory — Get Real!
When I bought my Rev B iMac a little over a month ago, I got it at
a substantial discount, and used the hundreds of dollars I saved to throw
in an additional 128MB of RAM. Let's just say that with the luxury of 160MB
of memory, I don't even have to think about memory at all. My iMac runs
on real memory and could probably outperform anyday a Rev C 266MHz iMac
running with Virtual Memory with just the standard 32MB RAM. True, all
my applications take up more RAM than if I was running with VM turned on (as a
matter of fact, the Mac OS alone gobbles up about 40MB of memory), but
like I said, I don't even think about it now that I've got lots to spare.
Fact is, the difference in processor speeds between 233MHz and 266MHz, or even 333MHz, is less discernible than you imagine, whereas the performance difference between real RAM and Virtual Memory is much more apparent. In most applications that don't push the processor to its limits, a 233MHz G3 chip is more than well-equipped. Remember, it outperforms even a 450MHz Pentium II chip in BYTEmark tests (7.9 versus 6.2). In processor-intensive applications like Photoshop, or in games, its performance is still decent, from my own experience. Of course, if you're a serious gamer who's into top-end heavy-duty action, there's always an option like the highly-rated iMac Game Wizard Voodoo2 mezzanine card that you could pick up.
But if you don't have enough real memory in your iMac, forget it. You're simply stifling the true performance level of your iMac, besides wearing down your hard disk by having Virtual Memory turned on. Not only that, I would say that having a generous RAM headroom contributes to a more stable performance, meaning you won't have to reach for that straightened paper-clip as often.
There also comes a point when you realize that just processor speed alone won't help you keep half a dozen applications running at the same time, especially if one of them is Communicator 4.5 with 10 webpages open and another is Photoshop 5, and you've only got 32MB of RAM and operating on OS 8.5. You need memory. Lots of it. Since getting my iMac, I've had to resist the urge to quit applications before opening new ones, a habit that's ingrained in me from the days when I was still using my memory-challenged PowerMac 8500 (which has now got a more decent 80MB of RAM).
Using spare memory for a RAM Disk
One of the perks I can well afford now is to lay aside a portion of
memory for a RAM Disk which I can use as my browser cache folder, or even
as a scratch disk for Photoshop. (You can even opt to save your RAM Disk
contents on shutdown if you want.) The lightning speed at which cached
files are retrieved from the RAM Disk compared to a cache folder in your
hard disk is a sure way to boost your web-browser's performance considerably,
believe me.
IrDA and The Mezzanine Slot
Yes, that's what the Rev A and B iMacs have got that the newer iMacs
haven't. The iMac's IrDA feature hasn't created as much of a stir as the
other features have, but it's a great feature to have nonetheless if you've
got an IrDA-enabled device like a digital camera, a PDA, or even a PowerBook,
that you need your iMac to communicate wirelessly with. As for the "mezzanine"
slot, I imagine the people at Apple must have put it there in the first
place for some reason, before hastily screwing on a metal plate where a
(Video-Out? FireWire?) port should have been. Whatever the case, it leaves
open future possibilities for the Rev A and B iMacs which the newer iMacs
seem to have been denied (although I suspect these features will eventually
reappear in later iMacs).
Mac OS Support
In terms of Mac OS support for the iMac, no worries for the foreseeable
future. Soon to be released, Mac OS 8.6 will run on all PowerPC-based Macs
and newer, just like OS 8.5. With the advent of Mac OS X later this year,
the Mac OS will eventually run only on G3-based systems and newer, including
of course all current versions of the iMac, and there's no reason to assume
that OS support for the hugely-successful G3 systems won't continue for
a long time to come. So no worries there either.
Processor Upgrades
Remember too that the processor in every iMac actually resides on a
daughter-card that's plugged onto the main logic-board of the iMac. The
modular architecture allows the processor card to be conveniently replaced
with an upgrade should such a need arise in the future. The real performance
bottleneck might actually be the present 66MHz system bus, which may be
only good enough for one more speed-bump before having to move up a notch
to the 100MHz mark.
The Bottom Line
If you're the owner of a Rev A or B iMac, take heart. There are things
to be thankful for, and avenues to make your iMac perform at its best.
And like Amy Hoy said in her
Daily iMac article, your iMac will certainly last, end of story.
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