I recently received an email from a reader in which he took me to task for saying that his older Macs (LC II in this case) should be replaced with a newer Mac. It got me thinking. Is there any compelling reason to upgrade to a new Mac, or can you survive in today’s computer world with an older LC II?
There was a recent column from Jonathan Ploudre titled “Abandoning the Low End” that really is worth reading. Jonathan makes some great points, but I want to go a little further.
Back to the email from that reader. He proudly says, “While your LC II is gathering dust, mine is being used to get work done.” Which of course is great. If you can still use such an old machine, by all means keep it running. But I wanted to take that as a starting point for this article, and look at the feasibility of that old Mac working in today’s computer environment, in comparison to a new Mac.
Also, please understand this is not an attack (as some will see it) on people using an older Mac. But also be aware that I give no apologies for my opinions, both as a writer, the publisher of this site, and a full time IT Manager. These are my opinions. If you don’t agree, fine. Send me some email; refute my conclusions and arguments.
New Mac vs. Old Mac In his email, the Mac user above makes some arguments on why the old Macs are “Much Better” than the new ones. When asked why the older Macs are better, no real answer was given. So let’s look at doing certain tasks with an old Mac and a new Mac and see which is better.
Internet The main reason today most people buy a computer is to get on the Internet. Many of them don’t even know why they want to. Ask someone walking the aisle at CompUSA looking to buy his or her first computer.
“Why do you want a computer?
“To get on the Internet.”
“Oh, okay. What do you need the Internet for? What will you do once you get online?”
“Play fantasy football / look for job / eBay! / Etc…”
So, can you get on line with a LC II? Sure. You have to have an external modem. Chances are, you may already have one. Many of the LC II Performa Macs came with a 14.4 modem. If you’re smart, it has at least a 56K modem now.
Broadband? Nope. You cannot use a cable modem with a LC II. Nor DSL. Unless your Mac has an Ethernet card or port, or has an open slot for one to be added, you cannot use fast Internet on your Mac. You can network the LC II in a roundabout way using AppleTalk, but it will be SLOW.
What about just browsing the ‘net with your LC II. Well, sure, you can do that. Unfortunately, you can’t use a newer web browser. More, most large and popular sites use newer HTML, JAVA, CSS, or other coding that your old Netscape Navigator 2.0 browser can’t read. That will leave you with, maybe, 10% of all popular web sites you can visit and read.
Want to view some of those Star Wars Episode II Teaser QuickTime movies on line? Well, with that 14.4k modem, it would be quicker to wait six months until it hits the theater than to wait for that to download. Oh, wait, my mistake. Even if you do download it, you won’t be able to watch it using the QuickTime which system 7.5.5 uses. (Mac OS 7.5.5 is the latest OS you an run on an LC II.)
How about simply sending email? You don’t need a fast connection to send and receive email. All you need is an email program, a dial up connection, and a keyboard. You have all those things? Great! Use Eudora or another of the older email programs. They still work well. Of course you won’t be able to read any email that has HTML in it, which is a LOT of email today. And with your slow connection, you had better hope no one sends you any attachments. That could get ugly quickly. But fear not, chances are if it is a large email attachment, you won’t be able to open it anyway. Remember, you machine only has a maximum of 10MB of RAM.
Well, you could always take your CD’s and create MP3 files, right? Use you Mac as a jukebox! Oh, sorry, no. Your LC II does not have a CD-ROM drive. Beside that, you can’t play MP3’s on it.
Want to get a larger hard drive? Good luck finding a SCSI drive that will work in your LC II.
Want to at least be able to make custom music CD’s. Well, we already know you don’t have a CD-ROM, but you cold always buy an external CD-RW, right? You do have a 25-pin SCSI connector on the Back. So after spending a few hundred bucks to buy a CD-RW, you realize you have another problem. No current CD-RW software works on your old machine. Worse yet, audio CD’s use the AIFF format. A full CD can take up to 650MB of space. How large is your hard drive? Only 40MB? Oh. Ouch…
Hey, I know! Writing! You can use that LC II to write the great American novel you always wanted to write. You already have Word 5.1 or ClarisWorks, so you should be all set! You can always print it out using your StyleWriter printer. Good luck finding ink cartridges for it, though. But you can also email your script to your publisher, right? And after they edit it and send it back to you… Oh shoot. They could open your file, but they saves it in Office ’98, 2000, X format. You can’t open that. Quick, email them back and have them resend it in an old format you can open!
What else? Well, you can use an old bookkeeping software solution on it. No problem there at all, unless you want to share files with a new Mac or PC, or do any online banking. Other than that, no problem.
What else can you use that old LC II for? I suppose you could use an old image editing software program to play around with. Maybe even make a web site. You may even have an old SCSI flatbed scanner connected. So there you go, you can scan in pictures, edit them, and create some basic web sites! Of course, for each one image you scan and edit on the LC II, you could do five times as many on a G4. Maybe more…
Let’s not even get into being able to run Mac OS X.
Look, if your running an old Macintosh, and it suits your needs, then by all means continue to use it. After all this time, your investment in it has paid off by now, and this is all “free time” using the computer. No more credit card payments for that purchase. But if you want a computer that can use the very cool new tools, can be used in the most up to date ways, and can become much more than a machine that just does one or two things well, it is time to buy a new Mac.
Which Mac you buy depends on your needs. I would suggest that if you have used your old LC II this long, and want to upgrade now, then you should get as much computer as you can. Get one that will be able to be upgraded. That has the room to grow with you, as chances are you will have the new box for a very long time if your past track record is any indication.
If your under the dilution that your old LC II is just as good as a new G4, well, it is just that. A dilution. The new G4’s running Mac OS X is so far superior in every way to the LC II, you cannot even begin name all the ways.
But there is one thing to really be proud of when it comes to that old LC II. Your Mac can still be useful, and there are still people who would love to use it given the chance. The same cannot be said of any PC made in 1992…
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