Free Power Mac G5. How useful is it for today?

If it's a quad it would be 2.5 GHz. That's about the only one that is still of good use today. It could handle CS4 pretty well, especially for something that's free. Being quad core, it's also really nice for ripping things in handbrake

So long as your needs/wants aren't limited to Intel-only programs (newest version of Adobe CS, WoW [in a couple months]), it's a fantastic machine still.

You'll be very happy with this machine. I use my dual core 2.0 for video editing HD content. It works great! Good for you!

alust2013 said:

If it's a quad it would be 2.5 GHz. That's about the only one that is still of good use today.

Click to expand...

This is totally erroneous. I have a dual 2.0gHz G5 (first gen) and it runs CS4 amazingly well, especially everything needed for prepress and design (psd, ai, indd, distiller, etc.)--to give you an idea, I am a freelance typesetter and graphic designer, and it was my main machine until about June. I had zero complaints, I just had clients requesting things in CS5 so it was time for me to move on.

Flash runs ok, though rendering and previewing are rather slow. The video apps won't work in PPC.

As for day to day use it is pretty much as fast as my quad i7. Simpler tasks (like web browsing, email, etc.) aren't really improved all that much by newer machines, the base requirements are so low it's ridiculous.

For audio production, a G5 is phenomenal, provided your software and hardware work with your system.

For programming you're fine depending on what you do. If you're using Xcode, you just need to make sure you download the most recent PPC compatible version, as the current releases are all Intel only.

The REAL limitations of the PPC line at this point:
Animation Rendering
Working with HD video (and, to an extent, HD playback, especially streamed)
Newer software being Intel only
Minimal chance of iPhone/iPad programming (by hand, yes; by kit, no)

That is IT. It might run a bit slower for day to day stuff than a newer intel, but guess what? An older Intel will run slower than a newer intel as well. Put in as much RAM as you're willing to spend on, then get yourself an SSD (or a pair in RAID0) for a boot disk and you'll be shocked how well it will run for most uses...

(NOTE--I HIGHLY suggest the SSD or a pair of them for a G5 upgrade. As opposed to anything else you can add to an older system, an SSD can move on with you when you upgrade to a newer one, so dollar for dollar it is the best performance increase plus best longevity of anything you can add to a PPC machine)