h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Q1. I'm using an old clamshell laptop this week, OS9 with IE and icab on it to browse with, both of which can't load the website of my dvd rental service Firefox and Opera don't have an OS9 version. Are there any other broswers to choose from?


Q2. The laptop has a 6GB hdd, CD read only drive, USB and ethernet ports. RAM is only 96MB. Can I install OSX*? And would it be worth it?

*In the past I've set up a network where I transfered data from the clamshell to my powerbook, and wondered if I can use that to install OSX. I'm guessing the hdd and RAM are too small but thought I'd ask anyway.

Hi Kea

Here is a link ( http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/techspecs/ ) to the (UK) Apple OS X Tech Spec page. At the bottom are the minimum requirements for Tiger (10.4). 10.3, 10.2 and 10.1 will be similar but it seems to me that you should be able to run OS X on the clamshell iBook.

I still have the old G3 iMac (400 MHz) with a 10GB HDD and 1GB of RAM and that runs 10.3 (Panther - what was 10.1...Moggie probably?!) with no trouble. I have been told that it would be better with Tiger but I can't install that from the discs I got with the Intel iMac and I'm not paying for it!!!

If you have the discs from the Powerbook and they are CD and not DVD then use the discs. It may be possible to install over your network if you can arrange it such that the optical drive in the Powerbook could be used by the Clamshell. I'm not that savvy so maybe one of the other Mac evangelists will happen along and confirm or refute this!

As for browsers try Mozilla here ( http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/3016&vid=74980 ). This should be a link to Mozilla 1.2.1 on Version Tracker.

Good luck.

turvy

According to that system requirement page kea would need 256MB of RAM. Would her post suggest she does have...

Thanks turvy. OSX needs 256MB RAM then

The maximum I can fit into the ibook is 288MB. I'm not sure it's worth it as it doesn't leave much for other applications.

Simulpost


What's the legality of installing OSX on another machine? If I use the internet on the ibook, will apple be able to tell? Will they care?

I should think that it strictly breaches the end user lisence to install the OS on another machine. As for whether Apple would know or care - I doubt that they would care even if they did know. It's file sharersthat share their OS discs widely over peer-to-peer networks they are most concerned about.

In relation to the RAM requirements my old G3 iMac ran 10.1 quite happily with 192MB RAM. It is always worth checking the discussion boards to find out whether the minimum spec is a real lower limit.

turvy