Mac OS X and iBook...
 

Here's the plan:

I wanna buy a cheapo laptop for school (basically just for writing, it would be), and I was wondering if Mac OS X would run smoothly with an iBook of these specs:

700MHz PowerPC G3
512K L2 cache @700MHz
128MB SDRAM memory
20GB Ultra ATA drive
ATI Radeon 7500
16MB dedicated video memory
CD-ROM
Built-in 56K v.92 modem
AirPort ready
Up to 5 hr. battery life

It comes with OS X and such, and it fits the minimum specs of course, but just barely. I don't need it to do anything spectacular, pretty much just school-related writings and stuff, but would the little iBook be overly bogged down running with OS X?

It's great to see you're getting an Apple. :D

Anyway, to answer your question, that iBook has about the same specs as my 2.5 year old iMac DV and I'm running OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). And it runs great on my iMac. Fast considering the age and specs. I say go right ahead, for your purposes, it'll be fine. I think you'll be impressed.

Well you do know buying a cheapo laptop will give cheapo performance. It will work, yes. Don't know if I can go any further than that ;)

My sister has a 700mhz iBook, but it's not running Jaguar, it's running 10.1 still, so I don't have first hand experience using it.

Now, If you have some additional cash, I'd give it a tad more RAM, and if you have more cash than that, go with the next model up, with the combo drive. Without a CD-R, you would need some kind of external drive, or network to transfer the files on, if you need to.

Also, I need to check to see if you woul support Quartz Extreme, because without it, it'll put a bigger load on the processer. Do you know GameMaster?

Anything Rage 128 or higher should work. The iBook's come preloaded with Jaguar so I'm assumig the Quartz Extreme works on them.

power to the people