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Was it love at first sight or a simple matter of necessity that made you buy that early series iMac? The color or later the colors, the shape, or perhaps it was that you just wanted one of those mile stones in design that so many others were buying? I must say that even though I had far more use for a Mini Tower or a PowerBook, I could only hold off buying one for about a year after they were first released to an eager world. When I saw the retail prices of the "Life Saver or Fruit Color" series had dropped close to the grand mark, I popped for a Blueberry 333 MHz G3. I still have it in my study as a handy Internet appliance because it's still a very useable and uncomplicated computer! All you have to do is look at a local newspaper's classifieds, or one of several web sites where used Macs are sold, to see that these earlier iMac really hold their value! The first "Bondi" iMacs still sell for around $325 and last of the 333 MHz iMac's are often around $500. As I said in the PowerBook upgrade article, what do you think you could sell a four-year-old PC for which you paid around $1,100? $150 maybe, if you're lucky! So, would you or I consider upgrading an iMac? Is it at all possible to upgrade it? The answer to both is a vehement YES! If you've got one of these early iMacs, whether a Bondi Blue 233 G3 (Rev A or B) introduced in August 1998, or one of the "Fruit Color" iMac of 266 and 333 MHz (Rev C or D )released in January 1999 and ended production on October 1999, you can do a lot to keep it very current.
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Assuming that you've decided to press on with a face lift for your Rev A through D iMac, and some of these things may also apply to the later "slot CD loading" iMacs, lets start with some basic items and work our way up. If you're still using that awful original Apple "hockey puck" mouse, please replace it! There are any number of really nice Mac compatible USB mice out there that offer three buttons, a scroll wheel and are optical, rather than mechanical. While you can spend as much as $40 or $50 on a wireless optical mouse, here's the all time great buy, the Logitech Optical USB mouse with scroll wheel for all of $19.95, just about any place you look. Fits great in your hand, either one, and Logitech has written very complete Mac OS X (beta) and OS 9.x software for it, that allows you to use the right button (or left if you a southpaw) in place of the Control Key for most tasks. Ahhh, mouse nirvana. Now, how about that original keyboard, yeah also pretty awful with those ultra mushy keys. I tried out the very few keyboards that are available for Mac and all had some drawbacks that put me off except for one, Apple's Pro Keyboard. While the keys aren't as tactile responsive as I like for a lot of typing (I loved those old IBM keyboards), it does has a positive feel and it looks great. |
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