[hubpages.com]

So they compare a Macintosh Plus from 1986 to a modern PC with DualCore 2.4Ghz processors to see which is actually faster in an everyday work environment.

They also compare some specs-
System 6.0.8 requires 1MB, Windows XP requires 1.5GB and Windows Vista 15GB. Yes, Vista needs 15,000 times the hard disk space as System 6.0.8.
Of course OS X needs at least 2GB I believe, but every modern OS has such massive requirements to do just the same things that were done 20 years ago.

And people keep saying that PC's are business machines... It seems like they have become something different. I imagine they would get similar results with an old PC vs. a modern Mac as well.

my OS 9 boot G4 Dual 1.25 MDD flys in OS 9

sometimes i wonder why i ever stopped using OS 9

the MDD was really super loud...

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

I know, I wished I could run straight OS 9 on my G5 instead of "classic". OS 9 was smokin' fast on those last G4's.

As the article ended with, productivity really hasn't increased at all since then. Sure, we can do a greater variety of things on a computer than ever before, but is that really important? I mean it seems like we are just looking for more instruments to play for the sake of knowing how, without ever becoming proficient at any one.

I wish OS 9 was as stable as OS X. I wish OS 9 didn't have to be rebooted after an app crashed.

I wish OS X offered a different skin, or speed mode, which had less of the eye candy to maximize speed.

I agree about the excessive eye candy in X. I'd love to run a stable OS 9, keeping the sane finder, the proper font rendering, a professionally-chosen mouse response curve and the blazing UI speed!

But at the same time, I have to admit X is doing things 9 couldn't dream of without a serious under-the-hood rewrite. OS 9 was limited to 2GB files IIRC. I download and burn 4GB - 8GB DVDs in OS X quite regularly. The 31-character filename limit wasn't a huge hinderance, but every once in a while you want to name a file "Resume 050731 as sent to Jamie Blanco at HugeCorp for the EE position", and it's nice to be able to do that.

If people remember, true "video on your computer" was still a pipe dream in the late 90s. (I'm referring to storing movies on your hard drive, watching them, editing them, and outputting them.) Now I can download shows on my cable modem then transcode videos to true DVD. On my dual G5 it's just drag, click, let it run for an hour. iChat does four-way video conferencing with ease, at least that's what I hear.

Incidentally, I had the pleasure of booting up a Mac Plus at work today. It was fun. Yes, the mouse was amazingly responsive. But I started noticing a lot of things...missing. No real multitasking - heck, no multifinder! Only one application open at a time, please. The finder was so slow you could actually watch windows redraw. (Kind of like X on an older G4..) The art on the tiny black-and-white screen looked pretty nice in a retro sort of way, but any off-the-hand snapshot with a digital camera blows it away.

Sure, if all you do is write papers and send text email, you could still live on a 1980s computer. You could even make a living. But modern machines let you do entirely different types of things than you could back then. I miss the old ways sometimes, but I wouldn't go back.

Interesting link. As someone who in the last few years has used 68k Macs, old word processors, text web browsers, and older email clients to do some serious work, I can appreciate such a comparison.

Then again, a 500MHz G3 iMac with 1GB RAM and judicious selection of hardware appropriate applications makes my nearly seven year old system feel relatively speedy.


Nathan

My (constantly in-use) Mac II ci reboots very quickly, and is decent in most things. Maybe I'll get a turbo upgrade for it.

I have a 50Mhz upgrade in my IIci. I haven't used it for years but at the time I first dropped that faster cpu in, it felt like the computer was really quick - especially with FPU intensive tasks.

Every once in awhile I'll boot in System 9 on my 1.25Ghz MDD and I'm always amazed at how incredibly fast it is.

sometimes i wonder why i ever stopped using OS 9

I never wonder. I wonder how I how tolerated it as long as I did. It was a dog compared to OS 8.6 and OS X.