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What To Do With An OLD iMac

I know a lot of people with one of those old “flavored” iMacs sitting around. I even have one myself. But what to do with it? Not so long ago the HD on it died and I got a bigger one and more RAM installed which brought the whole machine back to life. Bob Levitus gives the same advice in the Houston Chronicle:


flavored imacsIn the end, I recommended keeping the iMac, but adding a bigger hard drive and more RAM. I speculated that upgrading to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther might offer additional speed, but wasn’t as important as the RAM and disk.

It worked. After backing up their 10-GB drive, I installed a 512-MB RAM chip ($139), and a 120-GB hard disk ($100), and I’ll be darned if the thing didn’t run a whole lot faster.

The RAM upgrade required no tools and took less than five minutes. Installing an internal hard drive isn’t quite so simple and will void your warranty, so while an external FireWire hard disk will cost a bit more, it’s a better solution. For those of you who insist on doing it yourself, upgrading the internal hard drive took a screwdriver and about 30 minutes, working from instructions I found on the Internet.

My point today is that adding RAM or an external hard disk to most Macs is a piece of cake. For less than $250 my friends now have a smooth-running iMac that will serve them for many years to come.

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Tip of the Day

F11 moves all your windows off the screen so you can quickly glance at your desktop. F10 shows you every open window in an application. F9 shows every open window for every application that isn't hidden or in the dock.


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