iBook G3 with OS X 10.3

[#1]

Is anyone still running along happily with OS X 10.3? Upgrading to 10.4 isn't really an option due to 384MB RAM, slow G3 CPU and slow hard drive.
Are there any web browsers available for it which give acceptable rendering of the web today?
Cheers

[#2]

Well, not really. The best that you can use is my optimised build of Camino 1.6.11 but that's really outdated now. There's no longer any choice in terms of functional 'modern' web browsing for Panther (10.3)

[#3]

10.4 has a minimum spec of 256MB, have you tried it?

[#4]

That may well be the quoted minimum but really it will barely run on anything less than 512mb.

[#5]

Thanks for the replies.
I'm wondering if, given that this will be used primarily for casual web browsing, the difference in JavaScript engine performance between the newest browsers for 10.3 vs 10.4 negates the disadvantage from running the more demanding OS?
Oh, I had planned on making a backup of the drive before attempting any upgrade; doesn't look like I'll be taking it out to do that though:

Why would anyone design something so that the most vulnerable part in a laptop requires stripping down the whole machine just to get to it. It's beyond ridiculous.
Is there any way of imaging the hard drive of an iBook G3 in situ? And being able to restore it from said image if something goes wrong?

[#6]

Yes, you can image the whole drive by using Disk Utilities (located in Applications/Utilities). Simply select the drive or partition you want to image and choose Create Image (I forget where exactly the command is located but should be somewhere in the menus) and save it away on an external drive.
To restore, if you have the Panther install CD/DVD, simply reboot the iBook with the 'c' key depressed and it should then load from the CD. Select language and then there should be an option to open the Disk Utility from the CD. Select the drive/partition and a restore tab should appear. I'm sure you can work out the rest and then let it do its job. Fin!
As for JavaScript performance, you're unlikely to notice any kind of difference on the old G3 iBook. In fact, for most cases you would be best advised to turn off JavaScript all together and only switch it on for rare cases. I used to see some scripts on pages take an age to even finish up before you can even do anything in the browser. Mostly the time out on script execution gets triggered and you're asked to stop the script running or continue (possibly to timeout again).
The iBook was never really designed to be easily upgraded as it was just a 'consumer' level laptop. Mind you, they seemed to have kept running a lot longer than most PCs out there.

[#7]

Quote from: RPMozley

The iBook was never really designed to be easily upgraded as it was just a 'consumer' level laptop. Mind you, they seemed to have kept running a lot longer than most PCs out there.

To be fair to Apple, the Macbook Pro looks a lot simpler:
http://www.reddit.com/r/techsupportgore/comments/1e280u/how_to_change_a_macbook_hdd/

[#8]

To close this out; there was a change of plan.
In the end I put together a basic Windows 7 PC from old bits and pieces I had lying around. It boots up quicker than the iBook took to load a Youtube video. A combination of a dated CPU with dated JavaScript engines in dated web browsers. It just seemed cruel putting the poor G3 CPU through that!