Mac OS upgrade advice?

[Guest]

I have a Mac G4-400 with OS 9.2 and 256 megs of ram.

Am running:
1. MS Office 98
2. Internet Explorer 5.1.7
3. Outlook Express 5.0.6
4. Acrobat Reader 5.0
5. Netscape 7.0.2
6. Illustrator 8.0
7. Photoshop 5.5
8. Riven 1.1
9. A whole slew of Classic minor apps and games

Would like to upgrade to OSX latest version. Will start with a 'clean' hard
drive with no files, apps or docs. Have two hard drives installed plus a
Fire wire drive and Iomega Zip100 drive (internal).

What Version OS should I use, and are there any updates/"packs" recommended?
Q; What Browser? Entourage? Will I have to get the new office suite to get
it?
Q: Which is best for OSX? Office 2004 or Office X?
Q: What Can I expect to have to do with the minor apps?
Q: Does my Epson print driver need to be changed?
Q: How about my Turbomouse Trackball

I assume that I will need to increase ram from 256 to 512. Will it help to
go higher than 512?

What else do I need to consider?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

What else do I need to consider?

Tiger would be sluggish on that machine, and unless you intend to
upgrade to OS X applications, there's really no point. I'd stick with
what you've got until you can afford a new machine with more
horsepower.

 

[Theresa]

I have a Mac G4-400 with OS 9.2 and 256 megs of ram.

Am running:
1. MS Office 98
2. Internet Explorer 5.1.7
3. Outlook Express 5.0.6
4. Acrobat Reader 5.0
5. Netscape 7.0.2
6. Illustrator 8.0
7. Photoshop 5.5
8. Riven 1.1
9. A whole slew of Classic minor apps and games

Would like to upgrade to OSX latest version. Will start with a 'clean' hard
drive with no files, apps or docs. Have two hard drives installed plus a
Fire wire drive and Iomega Zip100 drive (internal).

What Version OS should I use, and are there any updates/"packs" recommended?
Q; What Browser? Entourage? Will I have to get the new office suite to get
it? Q: Which is best for OSX? Office 2004 or Office X?
Q: What Can I expect to have to do with the minor apps?
Q: Does my Epson print driver need to be changed?
Q: How about my Turbomouse Trackball

I assume that I will need to increase ram from 256 to 512. Will it help to
go higher than 512?

What else do I need to consider?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

Use Tiger. You can't buy Panther anymore anyway. Entourage is not a
browser. Use Safari or Firefox or both. Either Office version is okay
for OS X. 2004 is the latest. You'll probably have to update and
perhaps pay to upgrade some or many of your apps. I hope you've kept
track of yoour serial numbers, product keys, registration keys, logins,
and passwords (I do, in an Excel spreadsheet).You can go online to get
the latest version of your Epson driver, although if my experience is
any indicator, if you hold out until your Epson is just shy of a year
old, it'll die anyway (my last two Epsons have died within days of
their 1-year anniversary. I will no longer purchase Epsons). You may
need to update your mouse driver, or not.

And frankly, 512mg of RAM is the minimum for running OS X and getting
any kind of performance out of your machine. I recommended getting as
much RAM as you can afford and your machine will take.

--
Theresa Mesa
Mesa Design House
http://mesadesignhouse.com

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[Jim Gordon MVP]

I have a Mac G4-400 with OS 9.2 and 256 megs of ram.

Am running:
1. MS Office 98
2. Internet Explorer 5.1.7
3. Outlook Express 5.0.6
4. Acrobat Reader 5.0
5. Netscape 7.0.2
6. Illustrator 8.0
7. Photoshop 5.5
8. Riven 1.1
9. A whole slew of Classic minor apps and games

Would like to upgrade to OSX latest version. Will start with a 'clean' hard
drive with no files, apps or docs. Have two hard drives installed plus a
Fire wire drive and Iomega Zip100 drive (internal).

The smallest install of Tiger will consume a little more than 1 gig of
hard drive space. If you add all the languages, translators, etc you can
boost that up to more than 2 gig, so make sure you have enough drive
space. Be sure to consider the options that are offered in the OSX
installer and don't install a bunch of stuff you'll never use.

What Version OS should I use

MacOSX version 10.4

, and are there any updates/"packs" recommended?

Use the MacOSX software update feature from the Apple menu to get all of
the current updates. As of right now when you are done with all the
updates your system will have 10.4.3 build 8F46 when you're all done.

Q; What Browser?

There are a lot of excellent browsers available. I like these:
Safari (comes with OSX)
Mozilla FireFox (free from mozilla.org)
Opera (Free from Opera.com)
Shiira (Free - find it via versiontracker.com)
OmniWeb (Small charge http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/)
Netscape (Only at version 7 but making noises like version 8 is imminent)
Camino (Free from mozilla.org)

It's a 4-way tie for my favorite right now: Shiira, Opera, Omni-Web and
Opera all have my attention. FireFox and Camino are right behind. Flock
is an up-and-coming contender but is still beta.

Entourage?

It's the best email, personal information manager, shared project, and
calendar application. You can't go wrong with Entourage.

Will I have to get the new office suite to get

it?
Yes

Q: Which is best for OSX? Office 2004 or Office X?

Office 2004 is best. It has everything Office X has plus lots more
stuff. Be sure you save the clip gallery, Office assistants files, and
templates files from Office 98. Most of that stuff will work fine in
Office 2004.

Q: What Can I expect to have to do with the minor apps?

Mostly you'll have to upgrade or abandon unless you want to install OS
9.2, which you can do and run them in classic mode.

Q: Does my Epson print driver need to be changed?

Tiger comes with oodles of printer drivers. Chances are that you'll be
able to use your printer. You can check for specific drivers at the
Epson web site.

Q: How about my Turbomouse Trackball

Don't know. Probably will work OK. Check their web site or Google groups.

I assume that I will need to increase ram from 256 to 512. Will it help to
go higher than 512?

Yes, it will help to put in as much RAM as your computer will accept.
Things will be much faster with more RAM.

What else do I need to consider?

I bought an external LaCie firewire DVD burner for not a lot of money.
An excellent addition. Make movies with iMovie and distribute them via DVD.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

Any time.

-Jim

 

[Ruari Callow]

It's a 4-way tie for my favorite right now: Shiira, Opera, Omni-Web and Opera
all have my attention.

I kinda suspect you might like Opera the most! ;-)

 

[Theresa]

I kinda suspect you might like Opera the most! ;-)

Opera is a pain to design sites for. It's used more in Europe than in
the United States. On my sites, it accounts for less than 1% of users.
Much less than 1%. Never heard of Shiira.
--
Theresa Mesa
Mesa Design House
http://mesadesignhouse.com

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[JE McGimpsey]

Opera is a pain to design sites for. It's used more in Europe than in
the United States. On my sites, it accounts for less than 1% of users.
Much less than 1%. Never heard of Shiira.

What problems do you have with Opera? As long as I don't go too far back
(and since Opera 7+ is free, I don't care all that much about versions
previous to that) Opera seems far more standards-compliant than, say, IE.

Of course, I try to design XHTML 1.1 standards-compliant sites.

Be a little careful believing your site stats - many people use Opera
(and Safari, for that matter) with the browser identifying itself as IE
(since some sites benightedly require IE).

Shiira has been around for a couple of years, it has a couple of great
features in Tiger (Tab Expose is incredible for tabbed browsing). It's
small, fast, and aesthetically pleasing, and free.

You should have at least one Shiira hit on your site now.

 

[Klaus Kamppeter]

Opera is a pain to design sites for. It's used more in Europe than in
the United States. On my sites, it accounts for less than 1% of users.
Much less than 1%.

At quite a lot of Web-sites, Opera is the only one that works. I use it
as last resource, if other brosers like Firefox and Safari dont function
correctly.

bye

 

[Theresa]

What problems do you have with Opera? As long as I don't go too far
back (and since Opera 7+ is free, I don't care all that much about
versions previous to that) Opera seems far more standards-compliant
than, say, IE.

Of course, I try to design XHTML 1.1 standards-compliant sites.

Be a little careful believing your site stats - many people use Opera
(and Safari, for that matter) with the browser identifying itself as IE
(since some sites benightedly require IE).

Shiira has been around for a couple of years, it has a couple of great
features in Tiger (Tab Expose is incredible for tabbed browsing). It's
small, fast, and aesthetically pleasing, and free.

You should have at least one Shiira hit on your site now.

Fonts go funky. CSS support can be uneven. I use AWStats, which gives
me detailed information on each and every browser and browser version,
among many other things. I pay extra for it. It's worth it.

Anything is more standards-compliant than IE. I spend most of my
development time making things work in IE. Would help if they embraced
the same box model the other browsers use. IE7 is supposed to be
better. We shall see.

I validate to XHTML Transitional (Strict does not suppport the use of
target:blank) and also make sure my CSS validates.

--
Theresa Mesa
Mesa Design House
http://mesadesignhouse.com

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[Theresa]

At quite a lot of Web-sites, Opera is the only one that works. I use it
as last resource, if other brosers like Firefox and Safari dont function
correctly.
bye

If a site is built so that it only works on Opera, that site has
serious, serious problems. I'd like the URL of a site that only works
on Opera so I can look at its code.

When I build a site, I make sure its code validates, its CSS validates,
and that it doesn't break on a variety of browsers on a PC AND a Mac.

I have found that while I love FF more than Safari, as a general rule,
Firefox gets funky when printing multi-page reports in WHM and AWStats.
I should report that...
--
Theresa Mesa
Mesa Design House
http://mesadesignhouse.com

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[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Never heard of Shiira.
http://hmdt-web.net/shiira/en
Shiira is a web browser based on Web Kit and written in Cocoa. The goal
of the Shiira Project is to create a browser that is better and more
useful than Safari. All source code used in this software is publicly
available.

It's not bad at all. I still favor OmniWeb though but that's a very
personal choice anyway,


Corentin

 

[Theresa]

It's not bad at all. I still favor OmniWeb though but that's a very
personal choice anyway,


Corentin

Yeah, but how well does it follow W3C standards? Which box model does it use?

--
Theresa Mesa
Mesa Design House
http://mesadesignhouse.com

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[mmmmark]

Tiger would be sluggish on that machine, and unless you intend to
upgrade to OS X applications, there's really no point. I'd stick with
what you've got until you can afford a new machine with more
horsepower.

You might consider looking for a Panther (OS X 10.3) on eBay. I have two
fruity iMacs that are running it very capably--one with only 384 MB RAM.
I've read reviews that indicate Tiger tends to bog down these older Macs,
but I've not upgraded them to see.

Truth be told, Tiger does not offer anything essential. Some may say that
Spotlight and Dashboard are essential, but I tend to disagree.

Good luck in your decision to upgrade or buy new.

-Mark

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Truth be told, Tiger does not offer anything essential. Some may say that
Spotlight and Dashboard are essential, but I tend to disagree.

I've got a couple of widgets that are useful (such as several Transmit
widgets that upload files I drag onto them to my ftp sites, but I could
live without them.

OTOH, I find I've *really* gotten dependent on Spotlight.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Yeah, but how well does it follow W3C standards? Which box model does it use?

OmniWeb is based on a customized version of WebKit. As far as W3C
standards are concerned it does just as well as Safari does.

Corentin

 

[Theresa]

I've got a couple of widgets that are useful (such as several Transmit
widgets that upload files I drag onto them to my ftp sites, but I could
live without them.

OTOH, I find I've *really* gotten dependent on Spotlight.

I prefer Find over Spotlight. Generally, when I'm looking for
something, I need to see the path, and Spotlight doesn't seem to offer
that. If I need to find that file again, I need to know where to look.
If I don't know the path, well then, <shrug>. So back to "Find" I go.
--
Theresa Mesa
Mesa Design House
http://mesadesignhouse.com

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[Theresa]

OmniWeb is based on a customized version of WebKit. As far as W3C
standards are concerned it does just as well as Safari does.

Corentin

So it uses the nonIE box model? I'm not familiar with WebKit, either.

--
Theresa Mesa
Mesa Design House
http://mesadesignhouse.com

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[Daiya Mitchell]

I prefer Find over Spotlight. Generally, when I'm looking for
something, I need to see the path, and Spotlight doesn't seem to offer
that. If I need to find that file again, I need to know where to look.

I think the point of Spotlight is that you don't need to know where to look,
actually. You can just let your files live anywhere! Paths don't matter!
Who needs folders!


What a nightmare! I like my orderly folder structure.

Daiya

PS. Surely Spotlight has some sort of control-click or cmd-click to show
the path? That doesn't make sense, not to.

 

[Michel Bintener]

So it uses the nonIE box model? I'm not familiar with WebKit, either.

OmniGroup has a website for tech-savvy people which you should find
interesting:

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/developer/

And while you're on the website, you should have a look at OmniWeb's
features. It is definitely a great browser, and I'm having a hard time
deciding on whether I should buy it or not. I do have a couple of problems
with it:

* I think that it is kind of slow, slower than Safari 2.0.2 at least, and it
also takes quite some time to start up.

* there's the (small) price tag in a world which offers so many browsers for
free. (I'm not blaming OmniGroup for that, though; they clearly invest a lot
of work in their products and should be rewarded for it.)

Hmm, it is about time I consulted my Magic 8 Ball widget on this.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I prefer Find over Spotlight. Generally, when I'm looking for
something, I need to see the path, and Spotlight doesn't seem to offer
that. If I need to find that file again, I need to know where to look.
If I don't know the path, well then, <shrug>. So back to "Find" I go.

I was talking about the technology, which Find/Search uses.

However, in a Spotlight window, one can just right click the item and
choose "Reveal in Finder" to open the enclosing folder.