get a g3 or "yesterday's news?"

a G4 imac would be a good idea, or an emac (middle/high end emac) since it includes a monitor, some of the models include dvd if you ever get bored n need it for dvds, it'll last you quite a while, but if your looking into pmac, wait till after new models are released (i doubt any new models will be released tomorrow but instead at the end of the month). the emac/g4 imac would be a good idea since it also includes a monitor, but if u wanted a diff monitor, powermac would be the way to go

I find my PowerMac G3/400 to be very useful still after 3 years. It could have been upgraded with a G4 card and a bigger hard drive and all that but I bought a PowerMac dual G4/800 instead.

The G3 will perform better under 10.2 than it does with 10.1.5, there's no doubt. I just don't feel that the hardware design is worth a lot of extra money. That said, I'll probably wish I had gotten a little extra speed out of it once the upgrades are all gone.

Buy a discontinued PowerMac G4--maybe a 667 or 733 with L3 cache--if money is an issue. I wouldn't suggest buying a G3 unless you just don't have another choice.

G3

Look, you say you only want to web browse, and do accounting, and all that stuff.
We have an iMac 233MHz running OS 10.1.5 with 160MB of RAM, and we can do all that very fluently.

Now, we have an imac 333MHz running 10.2, and this thing runs like a G4 400 on 10.1! I mean, this puppy really screams.

I would say (since it seems you have about 2200 to spend, you were looking at a tibook) get an iBook 700MHz with 14.1in Screen, and an iMac G3 600MHz from eBay or something, you can get one for around 650 bucks!

Re: G3

Originally posted by MacAztec
Now, we have an imac 333MHz running 10.2, and this thing runs like a G4 400 on 10.1! I mean, this puppy really screams.

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Wow, I've never heard anyone describe the speed of 10.1 on a 400MHz G4 "screaming" before... You've never used BeOS, have you? And I'm just guessing that it's been so long since you've used OS 9 that you've forgotten how slow X is in comparison...

this is along the lines of advice i gave to a friend lately:

the g3 is a great processor and will indeed do what you need it to do provided you have enough ram. i am completely happy with my iBook 600 and i am a very critical user. at the same time, it is my belief that the g3 will be phased out within a yr and a half, and Apple has done all they can to optimize OS X for the Velocity Engine (). Therefore if I were in the market today as i was 10 months ago i would buy a g4 machine.

just my thoughts.

Re: Re: G3

Originally posted by alex_ant

Wow, I've never heard anyone describe the speed of 10.1 on a 400MHz G4 "screaming" before... You've never used BeOS, have you? And I'm just guessing that it's been so long since you've used OS 9 that you've forgotten how slow X is in comparison...

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Jeesh. Ok my friend, which is faster. A G3 333MHz in 10.1 or a G4 400Mhz in 10.1?

Think about it....and you will understand

Re: Re: G3

Originally posted by alex_ant

Wow, I've never heard anyone describe the speed of 10.1 on a 400MHz G4 "screaming" before... You've never used BeOS, have you? And I'm just guessing that it's been so long since you've used OS 9 that you've forgotten how slow X is in comparison...

Click to expand...

give him a break man, he wasn't even born yet. he was born like three days ago

Re: Re: Re: G3

Originally posted by sparkleytone


give him a break man, he wasn't even born yet. he was born like three days ago

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No, more like 5,110 days ago...

But, are you saying when the G4 400MHz came out, an iMac 333 was about the same in 10.1 as the G4? I think not...

Re: Re: G3

Originally posted by alex_ant

Wow, I've never heard anyone describe the speed of 10.1 on a 400MHz G4 "screaming" before... You've never used BeOS, have you? And I'm just guessing that it's been so long since you've used OS 9 that you've forgotten how slow X is in comparison...

Click to expand...

A lot of people haven't used BeOS. Btw, how long has it been since you used Mac OS 7.5.5 or 8.6? Remember how slow they were? My PowerComputing PowerCenter with a 225 MHz 604e card running BeOS was much faster than my G3/400 running 8.6 but as soon as I started an application in 8.6, BeOS was doomed. I couldn't test against it because there were many applications.

Alex_ant is a knob.

Re: Re: Re: G3

Originally posted by bousozoku
A lot of people haven't used BeOS. Btw, how long has it been since you used Mac OS 7.5.5 or 8.6? Remember how slow they were? My PowerComputing PowerCenter with a 225 MHz 604e card running BeOS was much faster than my G3/400 running 8.6 but as soon as I started an application in 8.6, BeOS was doomed.

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I never said BeOS was the best OS ever. I only said I've never heard OS 10.1 called "screaming" before, especially not on a 400MHz G4.

MacAztec, it's great that you find such major performance improvements in Jaguar. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say it screams relative to the OS it replaced, or that it's "__% faster than ___," or something like that. I brought up BeOS because that was one OS that actually seemed to have performance in mind, unlike OS X. Running the two on similar hardware, the BeOS-OS X comparison provides a nice contrast between an OS that really does scream and an OS which is dramatically slower and decidedly not screaming.

The only way OS X could possibly scream is when it's compared against either 1) itself on slower hardware or 2) a previous version of itself. Because there is hands-down no slower OS anywhere than OS X.

Unless I'm totally off here and by "it screams" you meant "it's still slow as hell"...

Alex