iBookClamshell

There are many of us that are big fans of the Clamshell iBooks. I won’t go into my personal reasons, you either love them or hate them. I have had a few over the years and still to this day I enjoy using them. I especially love going out and watching how people react to seeing one. Many cannot believe that a 5-6 year old laptop can run the latest OS, have wireless built in, and do almost everything a modern laptop can do. Many people ask me which OS is best for these guys, and that is what I’m going to try to outline now. Many here know I am always installing something new on my personal Clamshell. I never keep anything saved on my Clamshell because on any given day I will wipe it and install a new OS on there just to test a new app I have heard about. I have written other views on particular OS’s before, but I thought I would write one thread here for everyone that would like a comparison of them all in one place.

To me there are three choices for an OS on the clamshell, OS 9.2.2, Panther OS 10.3.9, and Tiger OS 10.4.x. I have tested these 3 OS’s many many times over and over again. Sometimes I have felt that I have found the perfect OS, then all of a sudden I find that a different OS does something better, and off to test I go. I will go ahead and say this right off the bat, there is no perfect OS for the clamshell. Every single one has many pluses and minuses. Let’s go ahead and get started shall we?

OS 9.2.2 (500-700MB install size – minimum 128MB of ram recommended)

This one I have tested many times, and each time I think it might be perfect but of course the one thing that is the Achilles Heel of OS 9 are the web browsers. I have narrowed down the best browsers to IE 5.1.6, iCab 3.0.3 (current as of this writing), and Mozilla 1.3.1. IE seems to be the fastest of the lot, and many web pages work just fine with it. BUT… There are pages that will bring IE down faster then you can say force quit. We can’t be mad at it though, it is an abandoned browser and trying to render modern pages is difficult for it. Then we have iCab, which is a really well done browser. I have noticed however that with every new version it gets slower and slower. Some pages can take up to 2 minutes to fully load up, where IE will do it in seconds. iCab however can handle many newer CSS pages quite well, where the other browsers just don’t. iCab is also the only browser currently being updated for OS 9, so this should be installed first. Mozilla is a really sweet browser, it is fast and stable. There are some bugs in it, the most annoying for me is when the browser decides to stop accepting the enter key once a URL is typed in, it just forgets that key exists. There is an easy fix for it but it comes back eventually. It handles most pages well, but once again anything heavy in CSS or many of the modern pages just don’t work well. There is no clear winner with these, but having all three installed is a benefit everyone should have.

Aside from browsers I have found OS 9 to be very competent at everything else. Of course your milage will vary here, but let me outline some of things that are important to me. Word Processing is a key thing, and OS 9 does this quite well. There are many choices out there, but my favorite is still Appleworks. Digital photography is important to me too, and OS 9 does this average in my opinion. There might be apps out there that I am not aware of, of course if I hear of any great ones I will install OS 9 and check em out, but consider OS 9 lacking in the photo arena compared to modern OS’s. Email is email, nothing big there and there are MANY email apps out there that work perfectly to this day. Chatting is also important to me, I use two different clients, AOL IM and Google Talk. The AIM (AOL IM) side of things is easy in OS 9, just install the last version of AIM and your up and running. As for Google Talk.. I have yet to find a Jabber client for OS 9. If anyone knows of one please drop a note and I will check it out. Networking works well, as I have no problem browsing other Macs or PC’s in the house. OS X and Windows can see the Clamshell while OS 9 is installed, so no worries there. I would say for a student on a tight budget that has an older mac, or one of these Clamshells, OS 9 would work quite well for writing papers, chatting, emailing, and light surfing. And using OS 9 frees you of having to upgrade the computer to run them!

OS X Panther 10.3.9 (1.1GB minimum install size – 320MB of ram recommended)

I consider Panther to be the sweet spot for OS X love on the Clamshell. It is still a very modern OS, is 100% compatible with most things out there, has modern browsers that are updated, and even runs most of Apples latest apps. Speed is important and a Clamshell with an extra 256MB – 512MB of ram installed it is quite speedy. I find Panther to be very efficient on the Clamshell, and it gets my nod for best choice of OS’s. But there are a few things however that annoy me about Panther. Whenever you do an Apple update and it gets to the optimizing system part, it grinds to snails pace. It takes FOREVER to finish this part, so doing the updates to get you to 10.3.9 takes a bit of time. Of course once your done with the major updates this isn’t much of a problem, but it’s still an annoyance. Also the desktop doesn’t seem to update recent files to it until you actually click somewhere on the desktop. I never understood why this happens but until you click on the desktop you will see a temporary file name of your file or nothing at all. Once you click the desktop it fixes itself, but still it’s annoying. As far as OS features are concerned everything works well. Expose works, all the apps work, networking works, even the screensavers work here. If you have Panther laying around I recommend this OS for your Clamshell, it is a great balance of speed and features. You would have to spend a little money here though to get the most out of Panther, memory and a larger HD are recommended.

OS X Tiger 10.4.X (1.9GB minimum install size – 576MB of ram recommended)

Tiger I am currently running on my Clamshell, and I will for a few weeks until I am satisfied that I have run as many apps as I can. The OS takes up far more room to install, and if you have one of the default hard drives in there you can feel cramped quickly. Myself I have a 10GB HD in mine and taking up nearly 2GB of space for the stock OS is troublesome. After doing all the 10.4 updates to 10.4.8 (current as of this writing) it expands to about 2.4GB. Apps take up much more space in Tiger as well, the modern the OS the more space everything uses. If you choose Tiger I recommend a faster and higher capacity HD be installed to get the most out of Tiger. Memory is also an issue with Tiger, having 320MB 64 stock + 256MB upgrade (most common with Clamshells) is not enough IMHO. Tiger is a memory hog so if you plan to run Tiger max out your memory to the full 576MB (64 + 512MB upgrade), it will cost you around $100 or so for a 512MB stick of PC-100 / 133 memory, and much more to get a new HD installed, so ask yourself if spending the money is worth it at all just to run Tiger, which will still run slower then Panther would with less memory. Everything in Tiger works on the Clamshell, expose and Widgets are there, and run acceptably, but the OS is a little slower overall. The benefit here is that Tiger is the most recent OS Apple has, and everything out there is made with this in mind. You will benefit from all of Apple’s most recent apps, most recent security updates, and generally get the whole fully modern package. But there is a downside. Apps like iPhoto will not install (by default) with the limited 800×600 screen resolution. iTunes, Safari, and all the other default apps work quite well, but I have noticed that Safari is slower while using Tiger on the Clamshell then it is with the last Safari in Panther, of course RSS and some of the newest browser goodies are not in Panthers version of Safari, but you can always use Firefox or other modern browsers for that. Overall I would only recommend Tiger on a Clamshell if you have maxed the memory to 576MB, have a high speed (5400RPM+) HD, and don’t mind things running a little slower as a compromise for having all the latest apps and OS features. Running Tiger as I am now with the 4200RPM 10GB HD default HD is slow and cramped. If you are a music person and live for your iPod and iTunes you will find yourself filling that HD very quickly. All in all Tiger does run surprisingly well being the most recent OS on a 5-6 year old laptop, and having features like Spotlight is a real bonus, but upgrading the laptop to run it well might be a little much and a little too costly for the end outcome. Only the biggest Clamshell fans will upgrade to the max for Tiger and beyond! For the rest of you I would say buy a more modern iBook before upgrading a Clamshell if you want speed and future support.

There you have it, I will probably be updating this post in the future as I test out more apps and different OS’s. Leopard is just around the corner and I will of course be getting it for my iMac and my wifes Macbook, I will also be installing it on the Clamshell to test it out! I am not optimistic on it running very well, but time will tell. At this point I have decided I am not going to upgrade my Clamshell anymore, and what it has is what it has. Whichever OS runs best (pretty much Panther) will end up being my OS of choice. Also my Indigo Clamshell has recently had a problem with its CD-Rom drive. Sometimes it works and other times it just keeps clicking and not reading a thing. I suspect it has just run its course and is dying a natural CD-Rom death. A quick check on Ebay has shown they are quite cheap to replace, around $20-50 average price. But I will not be fixing it. I can install anything on it using another Mac using the Firewire Target Disk Mode feature. For a student or just a fan of the Clamshell I would recommend one any day, they are still my favorite laptops ever made. I truly wish Apple would revise the design idea for a modern laptop, with cool colors and a bigger screen with an Intel Core CPU, but Apple seems to have abandoned the idea of personal colors on a computer. Actually in my opinion Apple has become quite boring in the design area. Where once upon a day we had computers like the Power Mac G3-G4 design cases, the Cube, the colorful iMacs and ibooks, now we have only the same designs redone every year. The only thing cool Apple has done lately with color has been the black Macbook, but the price is insane for just a color and a little boring on the color choice. Still it’s a step in the right direction giving people the choice of what color their mac is, but the same old simple design with no personality is getting old. Apple, if any of you design people are listening, Add some personality to these computers! You did it before, do it again!

Anyway, please feel free to speak out and add to this thread, maybe if people like it enough it can become a sticky as many people still talk about the Clamshells and what they should install on them. I hope you Clamshell owners will speak out and add your own thoughts to this as well, maybe you have a different perspective on the OS choice!

Source: http://forums.macnn.com/69/mac-notebooks/316137/the-ibook-clamshell-os-best-you/