Test Machine #1: iBook G4, G4-800, 256 ram, ATI 9200 w/ 32mb.
Test Machine #2: Powerbook G4, G4-867, 640 ram, GF4MX w/ 32mb.
Both machines are on wireless connections.
This is definitely an alpha. Various things such as taking a snapshot to disk, etc, can cause it to lock up.
However, even though machine #1 has an ATI card, I experience no texture banding, or random crashing due to that. There was however a technicolor flash along the edge of the screen where avatars/objects crossed out of the FOV. I don't know if the better performance is due to a better ATI driver for Macs or better OpenGL support in OS X, as I'm not familiar with the graphics systems.
Ping on test machine #1 ran upwards of 600-800ms. This is likely due to the relation to the wireless AP, as #2 had a ping of 170-200ms and was much closer to its AP.
Ping times seem to spike when in the vicinity of bunches of people.
Frame averaged 4fps on #1, versus about 10fps on #2. Obviously more avatars meant less FPS.
The settings tweaks I made from default were to set bandwidth to 500kbps on both machines. Particles were also halved to 2048 on both machines. Machine #1's draw distance was 64, #2's was 135, although I believe that it didn't seem to make a huge difference.
Mouselook in touchpad is very touchy, tendency to bounce around everywhere. Affecting springiness did nothing for it. I also noticed that when using the arrow keys in mouselook, the touchpad does not respond. I still have to scrounge up a USB mouse to see if that solves the problem.
Overall, looks decent on both machines, I am happy, seeing as both are under the min reqs for the beta.
Thanks, Linden Lab, you've made my day... er, week!