Users get best of two OSes on a Power Mac G3
Box Score B Power Macintosh G3 Apple Computer Inc.. Cupertino, Calif.; tel. 408-996-1010 http://www.apple.com GSA price: $1,863 with 32M RAM, 4G hard drive, 24X CD-ROM drive and Zip drive; no monitor Pros and cons: + Fast performance for optimized apps + Moderate performance for PC software – Very slow for some PC apps and Java
Box Score Pros and cons: Think of buying the Apple Power Macintosh G3 as buying one computer and getting half of The 266-MHz system will appeal to loyal Mac users, which comes as no surprise. But the I tested the G3 two ways. First, I looked at performance in native mode under Mac OS The Mac has always been known for its friendly interface, and the G3 is no exception. My test G3 had only 32M of RAM. Thats a shame, because it would have performed The Mac versions of Microsoft Office 98 and other apps ran faster than Ive seen In nearly every word processing and graphics application optimized for the Mac, the G3 Java was a particularly weak area. I found the G3 handled Java worse than even a 75-MHz I also had printing troubles. The GCN Lab networks Hewlett-Packard LaserJet The G3 with Virtual PC did run Win95 apps smoothly, though slower than in native But the G3 gave me far from 266-MHz performance. The GCNdex32TM benchmark suite in The G3 wont be a good choice for users accustomed to fast-performing PC
B
Power Macintosh G3
Apple Computer Inc.. Cupertino, Calif.; tel. 408-996-1010
http://www.apple.com
GSA price: $1,863 with 32M RAM, 4G hard drive, 24X CD-ROM drive and Zip drive; no monitor
+ Fast performance for optimized apps
+ Moderate performance for PC software
Very slow for some PC apps and Java
a second computer free. It is equally at home running native Mac programs or emulating
Microsoft Windows 95 applications.
G3 also reaches out to the universe of Windows users, and it just might convert a few.
8.1. Then I installed Virtual PC from Connectix Corp. of San Mateo, Calif., and loaded
Win95. Needless to say, the system worked a lot better in native mode. But Win95
performance was better than I expected.
It comes with lots of extras you dont get on any standard PC, such as voice
accompaniment to error messages, easy memory configuration and a Zip drive from Iomega
Corp. of Roy, Utah.
much better with 64M. Ive never been a big fan of virtual memory.
on any other Mac. Word counts of really long files went a little faster on the G3 than on
a comparable 266-MHz Intel system.
performed as well as a high-end PC or better. But as soon as I moved away from optimized
Mac programs, performance dropped significantly.
Pentium PC. Apple officials acknowledged this and told me they are working on the problem.
printer kept outputting color pages in black and white. Also, the G3 took forever to send
a page because it must use emulation software, and the interface between computer and
printer is convoluted. Pages eventually printed, but not at top quality.
Windows mode. Except for the lengthy bootup and the Apple logo, you might not even notice
you were running Windows on a Mac.
Virtual PC mode clocked the G3 about the same as a 133-MHz Pentium. That is admirable when
you consider the tests were running under Win95 on top of Mac OS 8.1.
applications. But if you already use a Mac, or you can work with optimized Mac apps, the
G3 has full Mac functionality plus the ability to run all kinds of PC applications without
high-end requirements. Thats impressive.
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