Congratulations on that iBook G3! The 500 or 600MHz (Rage128) models are the pair of dualUSB iBooks I'll still admit to having wanted when they were new, and I'll also admit I would still not mind having today.
Even though DFA currently says the disk is not bad, I wouldn't discount the very distinct possibility that a laptop that was sold to be durable nine to ten years ago now has a disk that's going bad. This is a unique opportunity to really make the iBook G3@500MHz, which is considered by some to be one of the most durable and reliable dualUSB iBook models, into a fantastically reliable system.
If you have some money to put into it, I'd very seriously look at getting an SSD for it. Something like this: this from this search would be fantastic, I bet.
Although I would absolutely recommend that you install OS 9 and try your hardest to create a situation where you never have to turn on swap, due to the way SSDs work (to my understanding), doing something like swap on an SSD will cause it die earlier than not. It may be years before VM on OS9 kills it, but I think you'd be happier with 320 or 640mb of physical memory anyway. So even without an SSD, I recommend trying to run without VM or RamDoubler.
As far as web browsers go, honestly? I hate to say this, but IE5 is what I have always found to be the most reliable browser on Mac OS 9. I haven't used System 9 in awhile, of course, but when I was using it, the Internet had already passed it by, and even on my 1.0GHz G4 with a half a gig of ram, Netscape 7 was way slow, and even though IE5 properly loads a tad fewer sites than NS7 or iCab, it crashed far less often.
But... if you absolutely need access to the web, In these times, Classilla is probably your best bet, as it's 2010, several years after I ran OS 9 on any meaningfully frequent basis.
Also, there are phone and mobile versions of a lot of popular web sites. m.twitter.com and i.facebook.com, m.facebook.com or zero.facebook.com tend to work fine in browsers for old machines, and of course you could get an app like NCSA Telnet or MacSSH and use Lynx or Links on a public UNIX system like SDF, or if you know anyone with a Linux/UNIX server, ask them for a shell on that machine, or inquire with your school/university (when you're there) about shell access, many schools still have a general purpose UNIX or Linux server hanging out for students to access.
Lastly, AppleWorks 5 is a great choice for a writing environment, but if you can get access to one, another machine with AW5 would be beneficial, so that you have another point of access for those files, should, for whatever reason, your iBook become inaccessible. Saving the files as RTF is another good idea, since you can then use them natively in both AW5, any other app on the iBook, or in TextEdit or whatever on your MacBook.
Sorry for the long post, it was an interesting thread that I hadn't caught before, so I had a lot of things to say. [
] ]'>
Even though DFA currently says the disk is not bad, I wouldn't discount the very distinct possibility that a laptop that was sold to be durable nine to ten years ago now has a disk that's going bad. This is a unique opportunity to really make the iBook G3@500MHz, which is considered by some to be one of the most durable and reliable dualUSB iBook models, into a fantastically reliable system.
If you have some money to put into it, I'd very seriously look at getting an SSD for it. Something like this: this from this search would be fantastic, I bet.
Although I would absolutely recommend that you install OS 9 and try your hardest to create a situation where you never have to turn on swap, due to the way SSDs work (to my understanding), doing something like swap on an SSD will cause it die earlier than not. It may be years before VM on OS9 kills it, but I think you'd be happier with 320 or 640mb of physical memory anyway. So even without an SSD, I recommend trying to run without VM or RamDoubler.
As far as web browsers go, honestly? I hate to say this, but IE5 is what I have always found to be the most reliable browser on Mac OS 9. I haven't used System 9 in awhile, of course, but when I was using it, the Internet had already passed it by, and even on my 1.0GHz G4 with a half a gig of ram, Netscape 7 was way slow, and even though IE5 properly loads a tad fewer sites than NS7 or iCab, it crashed far less often.
But... if you absolutely need access to the web, In these times, Classilla is probably your best bet, as it's 2010, several years after I ran OS 9 on any meaningfully frequent basis.
Also, there are phone and mobile versions of a lot of popular web sites. m.twitter.com and i.facebook.com, m.facebook.com or zero.facebook.com tend to work fine in browsers for old machines, and of course you could get an app like NCSA Telnet or MacSSH and use Lynx or Links on a public UNIX system like SDF, or if you know anyone with a Linux/UNIX server, ask them for a shell on that machine, or inquire with your school/university (when you're there) about shell access, many schools still have a general purpose UNIX or Linux server hanging out for students to access.
Lastly, AppleWorks 5 is a great choice for a writing environment, but if you can get access to one, another machine with AW5 would be beneficial, so that you have another point of access for those files, should, for whatever reason, your iBook become inaccessible. Saving the files as RTF is another good idea, since you can then use them natively in both AW5, any other app on the iBook, or in TextEdit or whatever on your MacBook.
Sorry for the long post, it was an interesting thread that I hadn't caught before, so I had a lot of things to say. [
] ]'>