Processor Question...

You will notice that Gn machines will not be supported by SL. Hence you will need Leopard or tiger and old versions of dreamwraver, etc...

Probably the software availability will affect your decision more than cpu

There is no such thing as a G6 and if you can afford it go with an intel chip because Apple considers PPC(What G3's,G4's and G5's are) obsolete.You will be able to get more OS upgrades and more software on intel macs.G4's and G5's are still pretty good machines though.

ihuman:D said:

There is no such thing as a G6 and if you can afford it go with an intel chip because Apple considers PPC(What G3's,G4's and G5's are) obsolete.You will be able to get more OS upgrades and more software on intel macs.G4's and G5's are still pretty good machines though.

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I wrote Gn whete n is an appropriate digit

Kinjal said:

Well when you say "pretty good machines" what do you mean? I know it's probably really hard to put into words but I don't want to expect something and realize it's nothing like my expectations.

I am looking for budget... because I'll be buying 3-4 of these and it's for employees of my growing business. So I don't have the biggest budget like I did for my personal computers.

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You can browse the internet and use them for multimedia and some other apps and old games.

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aicul said:

I wrote Gn whete n is an appropriate digit

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What?

Kinjal said:

I'm looking at local deals for iMac's and even Mac Mini's and I'm really lost on what the quality and differences are between the old G4, G5, and G6 processors are...compared to the new intel chips.

Is there anywhere online that I can find a +/- on what's different? I want to make an informed buying decision so I want to know what it will be like buying a G6/G5/G4 compared to what I'm used to on the Intel chips.

Just in case someone here wants to help with explaining the differences... I mainly use web applications and web design on my computers. So using things like Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and maybe some video editing software.

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Hey,
Good questions and frankly they're a little tough to answer.

If you're looking at G4's and G5's for use in the Adobe Suites then you're going to be locked into CS4 or earlier. Note that Adobe required a G5 or multicore Intel for CS4 but some people have reported it working on high-end PowerMac G4's. Adobe really started embracing GPU acceleration for some features with CS4 and not all iMac G5 GPU's much less the PowerMac G4's met Adobe's GPU requirements. In my opinion if you go with an iMac G5 or mac mini, seriously consider sticking to CS3 to avoid some trouble.

Mac Mini G4 1.42GHZ vs iMac G5 vs PowerMac G5...
I really wouldn't consider the 2005 G4 MacMini for CS4. The mini maxes out at 1gig of ram and several of the Adobe products really need 2gigs to be useable.

The iMac G5 model MA064LL/A was a good machine in its day but wasn't nearly as quick as the PowerMac G5. Note that the iMac came with 512megs of Ram and would need to be upgraded to be useable with CS4 or CS3.

The late 2005 PowerMac G5 came in several different flavors and can all run CS3 and CS4 (with ram upgrades). I have a Dual G5 2.0GHZ as a backup machine in the office, with 10.5.8, CS4, 8 Gigs of ram and several hard drives. It handles CS4 okay. I will get beach balls on occasion in photoshop but I am not a graphics artist. It's great as a test machine to serve up local HTML dev files and some other stuff.

You will face challenges if you buy a G5. Outside of Safari you can't really find web browsers that still support PPC. I have to run a very old version of Firefox and Flash which has in some cases forced me to use other machines that can run current tech.

...

If I were in your shoes (ie growing a small business), I would seriously look at what my minimum needs are, what my budget per person is and see if you can squeeze yourself into slightly newer technology. Ie 2006 Intel MacPro or maybe a 2007 or later iMac or perhaps even at the very low end (a higher end) 2007 intel MacMini.

Can you give us an idea of what your budget is?


Curt