I thought I should share....

I dug out my ol G4 box (250mg ram, 500htz) with my studio 17" monitor running OS9.1 (as I'm getting rid off it) and you know what, it wasn't that bad.
I dunno, I was expecting to be laughing at the slow speed in even doing the simplest thing, but it just wasn't the case. Opened up photoshop files (in PS5!) Opened up projects in FCP2. All good!

It was spritely, it was responsive, in general experience it really wasn't that far behind my Macpro. (in basic operation sense)

Of course this is because the apps that I was running were suited to the OS. Not to big and complicated for the OS to run.
But you can get carried away with a few extra htz and mgs here and there. When in fact, I could quite happily produce a DV documentary with great graphics running AE5 and it would be the business.

Why am I saying all this....
Dunno. But it was fun, and not really the steam engine I thought. I struggled remembering how to work OS9 though. that was funny.

Maybe OS X (esp. Tiger) has a fair amount of baggage to slow it down in a software sense?

OS 9.x runs like the clappers on any G3; no version of OS X will ever give the same lightning-quick responsiveness like this! But that's the price you pay for all the graphical trimmings and less crashing I do still like OS 9.x though, there are some great games that never made of over to OS X.

It's surprising the amount of "slow" G4s on Mactalk still being used - a PC of comparable age would be under 10m of landfill by now. The fact is that a 500Mhz G4 is more than adequate for basic tasks, including basic photo duties. The Altivec core really does push things along.

JB