Product ReviewsDesktop computers
When the iMac was launched nearly four years ago, nobody, not even Apple, could have expected it to be so successful. Much of this success was due to the plethora of USB products that kept iMacs relatively up-to-date with bigger external hard disks, CD-RW drives, scanners and so on. Now that old iMacs are beginning to feel the strain with the emergence of Mac OS X, FireWire and USB 2.0, perhaps the time has come to lay your decrepit iMac to rest. With this product from Sonnet, you may not have to. The HARMONi G3 upgrade card gives your ageing iMac's processor a much-needed boost, and throws in a FireWire port. This gives your iMac access to the latest hard disks, CD and DVD burners, as well as the iPod and other FireWire goodies. This all sounds fine, but questions soon arise, like, 'Where does the FireWire port go?' and 'How does it draw its power?' It doesn't take a genius to figure out that installing the HARMONi G3 will not be a simple plug-and-play operation. Fortunately, Sonnet provides a well-illustrated 11-page manual that helps you through each fiddly stage, making the installation quick (around 20 minutes) and fairly painless. That said, if you're the sort of person who doesn't know a microchip from an oven chip, Sonnet recommends
We installed the HARMONi G3 in a 333MHz 'Rev D' iMac, with 320Mb of RAM, running Mac OS 9.1. This is the most recent iMac that the processor upgrade works with: more recent iMacs, with slot-loading CD or DVD drives, have processors soldered on to the motherboard that can't be removed. With the HARMONi G3 installed, we found performance across the whole range of tasks in our MacUser test suite improved significantly. Disk write and 2D QuickDraw speeds were around 20% faster, while processor intensive tasks showed performance increases from 30% in our Photoshop action script test, to more than 60% in an AppleWorks search and replace task. We then tested the FireWire port with a Freecom Traveller II CD-RW drive and a bus-powered Wiebetech pocket hard disk. On both counts, the HARMONi G3 card worked perfectly well and even outperformed a later generation 400MHz iMac in a FireWire disk write task. Our only grumble was the occurrence of a worrying buzzing noise as the powered port connects with a FireWire cable. But this was an annoyance rather than a problem, and didn't persist once the cable was fully inserted. Although the upgrade card will work with any operating system from Mac OS 8.1, you will need to upgrade to at least OS 8.6 to enable the FireWire port. Sonnet recommends running Mac OS 9.2 or OS X to take full advantage. iMac processor upgrades have been around for a while, but as they didn't upgrade the system bus, graphics card or connectivity, buying a new Mac always seemed a better option. With the HARMONi G3, the problem of connectivity has been eradicated, which might be enough to keep old iMacs running for a couple more years. NEEDS: iMac 233MHz, 266MHz and 333MHz (rev A-D), Mac OS 8.1 or higher (OS 8.6 or higher to enable FireWire, Mac OS 9.1 or higher recommended) By Ben Marshall |
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