[Ham-Mac] OS Systems

[John E Bastin, K8AJS]

At 15:00 +0000 08/06/2002, Cleeve wrote:
>Good afternoon,
>
>	I have two PowerBooks running on OS 7.6.1, One a PowerBook 
>Duo 2300c and the other, a PowerBook 3400c. I now see more tempting 
>software that requires OS 8 up, therefore I should consider an OS 
>upgrade.
>
>	My questions are, should I upgrade the OS system, and if so, 
>to which one, and assuming an upgrade is desirable, could one simply 
>jump from say OS 7, to OS 9 without the intermediate upgrades.

If you purchase a retail operating system package of OS 9 (on eBay, 
for instance) and not an OEM package from a particular computer, you 
can just install it without regard to the previous system.

I wouldn't advise it on your computers, though. I think you would 
find that it will be a very slow performer. You _must_ max out the 
RAM on both of those PowerBooks to even reasonably consider it.

>  Also, is there an optimum operating system for for each marque of 
>Mac, which would maximise the performance of each model, according 
>to its specification.

My recommendation would be to find a Mac OS 8.5 or 8.6 package (if 
you get Mac OS 8.5, you can download the upgrade to 8.6 from the 
Apple web site). That version should support the modern software that 
you want to use, and still run at a reasonable speed on both 
computers (assuming you have plenty of RAM and hard drive space).

>
>	Advice would be much appreciated, regards, John Cleeve.

Hope this helps.

73,
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