New Mac Buying Advice

[Spaceman Spiff]

My family is thinking about getting a mac. We are looking at the eMac, but we are concerned about the G5 switch. Wondering if it's worth it to buy a G4 now, if the rest of the line is upgrading to G5. We want a computer that will last us a few years without upgrading. We also want to run programs like Final Cut Pro 4 on it.
I'm hoping some of you experienced ones out there can help us.

Braden

[tazo]

a 1.25 sounds exactly like what ya want. 1299, very nice g4, good upgradeability, and will be loads more powerful than an emac :)

[stoid]

I have a 1.25 Ghz PowerBook, and it runs FCP 4 beautifully even with a slower 4500 RPM hard drive. I think that you will be extremely pleased with the purchase of a 1.25 Tower. On a related note, the family machine is a now 2 year old 733 Mhz G4 Tower and it has yet to show any signs of age. I don't follow the windows world, but I know that Apple computers are lasting a LOT longer than they used to. My high school is on a 4 year cycle, and some 4-year old iMacs are due for an update next year but they are running Mac OS 9 very well yet, and supposedly Panther is as snappy as Mac OS 9, so we will more than likely let them stay for another year or maybe even two. Good luck with your new Apple!

[rasha]

I noticed that you want to run FCP. Well any dual machine would be nice in the G4 range or go with the G5. It just seems to me that if you were using iMovie or maybe even Final Cut Express you would look at the lower end macs. With FCP you would be looking at tower with duals and expandability. Just my two cents.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Thanks for the advice on going for the towers, but the a catch with the towers. The monitor. Witch can be another 500-1000 dollars. So getting the monitor might lanuch it out of my price range.

[QCassidy352]

only if you are set on an LCD (i.e. you don't want a CRT).