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G3/G4 iMac recommendations

nomad01

nomad01

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
1,727
73
Birmingham, England
A friend of mine wants to buy a "vintage" iMac. He's an interior designer so going for the iconic look rather than specs and looking at the original G3 style or the "pod" style G4s.

Now this will be used primarliy for web browsing, email, iPhoto and iTunes (streaming his music collection to Apple TV - about 50GB of music). He'd like it to run OSX and preferably Leopard.

I'm guessing (from memory) that the original iMacs are out of the question but can anyone suggest a spec he might look for? Maybe somebody that's still using one of these machines could give an opinion? Also, what's the max spec (cpu, hard drive, RAM) that he could expect to pick up?

Cheers
Steve
 
shu82

shu82

macrumors 6502a
Jan 10, 2007
697
4
Rocket City, AL
If he is into design then its all about his tastes. But either of them can be upgraded to a 120 GB HD. If you go for a g3 I would shoot for one with at least 500 mhz and 16mb of vram.

Since they come in many flavors and available here for around $50, I would get one in a color that would work with his palate and upgrade the hard drive.
 
M

m1stake

macrumors 68000
Jan 17, 2008
1,518
3
Philly
I have a desktop G4 and it won't really run leopard... It's more powerful than the iMac.

I'd recommend something a little closer to today...

The current low end iMac would be good, although I still think the G4 iMac was the best to look at. He's not going to have a comfortable computing experience with Leopard on something that old.
 
0007776

0007776

Suspended
Jul 11, 2006
6,473
8,170
Somewhere
If he wants Leopard he has to get a G4 for Tiger any iMac with FireWire will work, and the origional iMac will work with OS X through 10.3.9. I would suggest that he goes with either the last of the G3s or any G4.
 
nomad01

nomad01

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
1,727
73
Birmingham, England
Thanks very much for the opinions.

I'd suggested he go for a G4 so i'll try to guide him down that route and hope it runs Leopard okay...ish.

Cheers
Steve
 
0007776

0007776

Suspended
Jul 11, 2006
6,473
8,170
Somewhere
nomad01 said:
Thanks very much for the opinions.

I'd suggested he go for a G4 so i'll try to guide him down that route and hope it runs Leopard okay...ish.

Cheers
Steve
Click to expand...

Just make sure the one he buys is over 867Mhz and max the RAM and he should be ok for Leopard.
 
brop52

brop52

macrumors 68000
Feb 26, 2007
1,620
3
Michigan
G4s look much better plus they have LCD. CRTs won't last quite as long. I don't know why he'd want to have Leopard. I guess if he has an external HDD hooked up to it all the time then yes it would be a good buy due to Time Capsule. Either that or a time capsule plus wireless. A G3 will not run Leopard.
 
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