20 inch, imac, 1.25ghz power PC ... Is it worth it ? £500

[bushfrog]

I have been offered a 20inch 1.25-GHz PowerPC G4, 256MB DDR SDRAM, 80GB hard drive

Its at a cost of £500

Is this worth it ? will 1.25ghz be suffient for most things ? Am i best to save for a current imac ?

Will i notice a massive difference to my macbook dual core 1.83ghz when running day to day apps?

please someone fill me in

[dukebound85]

i wouldnt get it personally. but then again it is a g4 lol

[Macmadant]

i wouldnt get it personally. but then again it is a g4 lol

you'll notice a difference, especially you'll see the spinning beech ball a lot more often, my G4 1.25 GHz powermac at 786MB ram is painful at times

[Eraserhead]

Will i notice a massive difference to my macbook dual core 1.83ghz when running day to day apps?

Yes, I notice the difference with my iMac G5, which is a lot quicker than a G4, so much so I don't use it anymore, with the £500 buy an external monitor, update the RAM on the Macbook to 2GB, and you'll be set.

[zephead]

I personally think that's a rip-off. £500 = $975 and I would not pay that much for a G4 machine. You could get a refurb Intel iMac with a lot more bang in it for not much more. Unless of course, you're going for the design (which then I couldn't really object to :D).

[eXan]

But, surely the G4 iMac is one of the best designed computers even made :D

[dmw007]

But, surely the G4 iMac is one of the best designed computers even made :D

I agree, it most certainly is. But it is not worth £500. :)


And yes bushfrog, your 1.83GHz MacBook will be much snappier than a 1.25GHz iMac G4. :)

[Mikael]

That's a lot of money for outdated computer tech. The G4 might have been all the rage back in the day, but it's time to move on. Or find one for reasonable money.

Also, the "snappiness" of a system has, contrary to widespread belief in the Mac community, very little to do with CPU speed. This is much more likely to be related to the harddrive. Heck even my old Pentium 200 MMX feels reasonably quick at non processor intensive tasks, due to upgrading the drive to a Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM.

[dmw007]

Also, the "snappiness" of a system has, contrary to widespread belief in the Mac community, very little to do with CPU speed. This is much more likely to be related to the harddrive. Heck even my old Pentium 200 MMX feels reasonably quick at non processor intensive tasks, due to upgrading the drive to a Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM.

True, things like a faster HDD and extra RAM will make even an older machine feel snappy. But there is something to be said when going from a single core PowerPC G4 to a dual core processor. :)