Is this a good starter mac?

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Orange.exe

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 22, 2005
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I found a dual 500mhz g4 powermac for about $300 w/ a gig of ram and tiger. Would this be suitable for basic functions like web browsing or ilife? Also, how would photoshop run on this computer? I'm aware cs2 would probably be slow, but what about cs3 if I put a better graphics card in it, and if its universal binary?
 
Orange.exe said:
I found a dual 500mhz g4 powermac for about $300 w/ a gig of ram and tiger. Would this be suitable for basic functions like web browsing or ilife? Also, how would photoshop run on this computer? I'm aware cs2 would probably be slow, but what about cs3 if I put a better graphics card in it, and if its universal binary?
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For $300, that's an OK machine. It would be fine for iLife-type apps, web browsing, etc. Photoshop would run OK on that machine with 1GB RAM. Not super speedy, but OK.

Also. . .that machine won't benefit from an application being Universal Binary. It's the new Intel-based machines that get the boost from Universal apps. Universal apps will run on your G4, but you won't see an added benefit on that machine (or any other PPC Mac).
 
Yeah -- the problem I see is that the $300 on an old PowerMac could be better-spent as part of the price of the cheapest Mac mini. And you can get some fairly nicely equipped ones in Apple's online refurb store (in the red tag Special Deals section). It'll be faster and won't have old technology like USB 1 or a slower optical drive.
 
I put my reccomendation on the Intel Mac Mini as well, it'll be faster, have more room to grow, and will sell for more if you decide it's not your thing.
 
CreativeMac said:
I'm not sure I equate "room to grow" with a Mini.
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I definitely meant he could upgrade it's memory, cpu and even hdd if i wanted to in the long run.

That G4 is going to be 1/2 as powerful and take up 10 times as much room and will be suported lessa and less in coming revisions of the OS, Leopard doesn't officially support G3's without hacking so what's next to go? G4's. The Intel architecture isn't going to be phased out as soon as the G4's will be, of course the G4's being the latest notebooks other than the Intel's mean they'll be lasting a while longer.
 
Optional87 said:
I definitely meant he could upgrade it's memory, cpu and even hdd if i wanted to in the long run.
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But by the time you put all the money into that stuff, why not just buy another Mini?

That G4 is going to be 1/2 as powerful and take up 10 times as much room and will be suported lessa and less in coming revisions of the OS, Leopard doesn't officially support G3's without hacking so what's next to go? G4's. The Intel architecture isn't going to be phased out as soon as the G4's will be, of course the G4's being the latest notebooks other than the Intel's mean they'll be lasting a while longer.
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From a certain point of view, that's true I suppose. I mean everything gets phased out eventually. But consider not only the range of machines that used the G4 processor, but the range of speeds, and the length of time Apple produced G4s. I mean the G4 processor went from 400MHz to 1.42GHz and were produced from 1999 to Feb of 2006. Apple certainly won't stop support/compatability for all G4s any time soon.

In a perfect world, a Mac Mini would be a better solution - but I didn't presume the original poster had the extra cash to get one.
 
CreativeMac said:
But by the time you put all the money into that stuff, why not just buy another Mini?



From a certain point of view, that's true I suppose. I mean everything gets phased out eventually. But consider not only the range of machines that used the G4 processor, but the range of speeds, and the length of time Apple produced G4s. I mean the G4 processor went from 400MHz to 1.42GHz and were produced from 1999 to Feb of 2006. Apple certainly won't stop support/compatability for all G4s any time soon.

In a perfect world, a Mac Mini would be a better solution - but I didn't presume the original poster had the extra cash to get one.
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Fair enough, there's always Apple refurbs and other sites who sell the Core Solo Mini's which would still probably be more powerful than that G4.

It's my prediction that next to go are the lower end G4's or one's that don't have a certain port or other spec, like how Mac's without firewire were phased out.
 
Optional87 said:
Fair enough, there's always Apple refurbs and other sites who sell the Core Solo Mini's which would still probably be more powerful than that G4.

It's my prediction that next to go are the lower end G4's or one's that don't have a certain port or other spec, like how Mac's without firewire were phased out.
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Well, I think to a large degree that will take care of itself. With the low cost of the Mini and the entry-level iMac, the reasons for settling for an older machine get tougher to justify. For what the original poster said his needs were, the 500MHz G4 would be usable. Not great, but usable. Adobe Creative Suite CS2 apps may not be pretty though. Last time a client asked me to install Creative Suite CS2, it took over an hour and that was from firewire-based disk images, not the Adobe CDs. And even then, that was only Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, & InDesign. Told it not to bother with GoLive.

I think we're already getting to a point where those machines will go to those who can't afford a more robust machine, or want a semi-disposable machine for the kids.
 
I'd definitely go for the Power Mac. Any Dual G4 is an excellent starter machine. And they don't come any more expandable than those earlier Power Mac G4s. You can take that thing to Dual 1.8GHz, 2GBs of RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB and whatever combination of PCI expansion cards you can think of. Excellent machines.

The Mac mini is, frankly, a toy. And after you've plunked down $600 for the base model and then another $100 for a decent amount of RAM, you wont be happy with what you've ended up with. And what you'll have ended up with is an iBook crammed into a tiny case. Not a desktop machine.

I suppose you can look at the mini as being upgradeable... If your cup of tea is breaking the bank for a top of the line notebook CPU that can't touch most midrange desktop processors and tiny, slow hard drives.

Go for the Power Mac.
 
Centauri said:
I'd definitely go for the Power Mac. Any Dual G4 is an excellent starter machine. And they don't come any more expandable than those earlier Power Mac G4s. You can take that thing to Dual 1.8GHz, 2GBs of RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB and whatever combination of PCI expansion cards you can think of. Excellent machines.
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Surre. . .but by the time you do all that, you've spent more than a new Intel iMac would cost only to be left with all the limitations of the Gigabit Ethernet series G4 - slow PC100 memory busses, slow processor bus, only 2x AGP, etc

I mean seriously, the dual 1.8GHz processor upgrade you mentioned on its own runs $600 and the Radeon 9800 Pro is another $250. . .so between those two upgrades alone you're already almost to a new Intel iMac. And you could even find single 1.6GHz G5 towers for about that much. If you're stuck on the expandability of a G4 tower, for $850 you could find a really nicely configured dual 1.42GHz Mirror Door G4 - which has two optical drive bays and holds 4 internal hard drives, uses DDR RAM, etc

I've found it virtually impossibe to come up with a situation where processor upgrades for the older G4s make sense - given the pricing of other alternatives, whether new or used.
 
CreativeMac said:
I'm not sure I equate "room to grow" with a Mini.
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I think that is a little misleading. I bought a Mac Mini to delve into the Mac world, and I dig it, but I like all PCs. Windows, Linux, and OSX based systems. It is a joy to use them all for different tasks.

Anyway, I bought a vanilla Mini with 512mb ram (2x 256) and a 1.5 Core Solo. It did its job but was slow.

So I popped in a 1.86 C2D and 2 GB Kingston ddr2 667. The thing is a little powerhouse now.

It is actually a little more flexible than an iMac, but not havign discrete graphics sucks, but then again, I don't game on Mac.

So in that regard I think a Mini would be a perfect starter especially with the transition to Intel cpus. You can find a refurb at Apple or a decent deal on Ebay.
 
FlimFlam said:
So in that regard I think a Mini would be a perfect starter especially with the transition to Intel cpus. You can find a refurb at Apple or a decent deal on Ebay.
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That may be - if you have the money. Several people have assumed that the original poster had the extra money to step up to a Mini (even a used/refurb). I haven't made that assumption.
 
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