Apple G3

The graph at the bottom of the page may give the impression that the G3 is a little slow. We tested it against a Pentium II/350 with 64Mb of RAM, using our usual Word, Excel and Photoshop tests, and a complex FileMaker benchmark to replace Access. On Word and Excel, the G3 is noticeably slower, particularly when there are charts to be manipulated, but that might be more to do with Microsoft's implementation of Office, and particularly Visual Basic, on the Mac than it is to do with raw machine speed. I say this because in Photoshop the tests took three to four seconds less time to perform on the Mac, while the FileMaker test was over 90 seconds faster. I wouldn't claim that the G3 is the Intel-killer that Apple has been claiming in real-world use, but it's fast enough, and I suspect that another 64Mb of memory would definitely improve matters.

However, the pricing needs to be addressed. For the cost of this G3, I could afford a top-spec Pentium III/500 system, complete with a 19in monitor, 128Mb of RAM, decent speakers, and quite possibly some bundled software. The G3 is certainly an impressive and innovative system but, when it comes to the bottom line, the price simply doesn't match the specification.

Author: Stuart Andrews