Amazing Speed from a Macintosh 8600

December 10th, 2006 at 2:00 PM - News by John Martellaro

MyMac published a blog by the legendary John Farr on Friday about his experience with an old Macintosh 8600 pulled out of storage. In Finder operations, it felt far snappier than his new MacBook.

"The 8600 had a lot of RAM, 648 MB maybe, and a 450 MHz G3 upgrade. That much RAM makes OS 9 shoot for the stars, too. It was unspeakably fast. Yes, noticeably snappier in the Finder than the 1.83 GHz MacBook with two gigs of RAM that Iim typing this on now. As far as I was concerned, it was The Fastest Mac in the World, hands down."

Mr. Farr described pulling the 8600 out of a storage shed where the temperature had reached -13F. He let it warm up, and after it booted perfectly, he was amazed at its speed in the GUI. "And it was so ridiculously fast. I mean, I could sell tickets or something. ("See? See?? Want to close a window? WHAM! Hit the pull down menu? WHAM!")"

In part II of the continuing story, Mr. Farr recounted his mailing label project for a client -- to replace her old Performa with his more capable 8600 that heid put away months ago. Now, heis perhaps rethinking the idea of giving up that beautifully fast Macintosh.