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Your Recommended Software for a G5?

G

g5forever

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2012
1
0
Hey everyone. 6 years ago, I sold my PowerMac G5 and put it towards a new PC for the family. Here recently, I was at a garage sale in my town and found someone selling a PowerMac G5 for $50 and snatched it up immediately. Come to find out, it's a dual 2.0, so I feel pretty pleased with it. It's already got 4GB of RAM so it's pretty snappy since I installed Leopard on it. So here's the point of my post:

What software do you recommend for my G5 (web browsers, what version of iLife, etc.) I've looked around online but haven't really found anything very specific. Thanks for the help everyone.
 
alexreich

alexreich

macrumors 6502a
Jan 26, 2011
638
26
Ordered a 1.8GHz (single) G5 a few days ago.. hopefully this thread will point me at the best software for my machine as well.
 
Jessica Lares

Jessica Lares

macrumors G3
Oct 31, 2009
9,612
1,056
Near Dallas, Texas, USA
I have a 1.8Ghz model with 512MB, I run the following perfectly fine:

Adobe Flash CS3
Adobe Illustrator CS3
Adobe InDesign CS3
Adobe Photoshop CS3

CleanMyMac
Cloud
Colloquy
Cyberduck
Transmission
MAMP

iLife 09
iWork 09

The Hit List (1.0.6) - You can buy this and then just look for the PPC version to use the registration details they gave you.

These are kinda shaky because it's an old machine running newish software. My renders are not too slow though actually.

Blender
Poser Debut
DAZ Studio 3
 
L

Liquinn

Suspended
Apr 10, 2011
3,016
57
Jessica Lares said:
I have a 1.8Ghz model with 512MB, I run the following perfectly fine:

Adobe Flash CS3
Adobe Illustrator CS3
Adobe InDesign CS3
Adobe Photoshop CS3

CleanMyMac
Cloud
Colloquy
Cyberduck
Transmission
MAMP

iLife 09
iWork 09

The Hit List (1.0.6) - You can buy this and then just look for the PPC version to use the registration details they gave you.

These are kinda shaky because it's an old machine running newish software. My renders are not too slow though actually.

Blender
Poser Debut
DAZ Studio 3
Click to expand...
Ahh nice; where can I buy/get CS3 now a days? It'd be cool to run Photoshop on my G5 that I'm getting on Friday ^_^ :)
 
L

Liquinn

Suspended
Apr 10, 2011
3,016
57
Jessica Lares said:
Well, the school preloaded me their copy with the new hard drives they gave me. So mine was free. Heh. But look around, just don't use eBay.
Click to expand...
I see. How long have you had your Powermac G5 for? Do you prefer your G5 or 13" Macbook Pro? Though, you can't really compare the two I guess.
 
Jessica Lares

Jessica Lares

macrumors G3
Oct 31, 2009
9,612
1,056
Near Dallas, Texas, USA
Liquinn said:
I see. How long have you had your Powermac G5 for? Do you prefer your G5 or 13" Macbook Pro? Though, you can't really compare the two I guess.
Click to expand...

Well, this machine was in the photo lab at school. The teacher got them like probably the month they came out. So it's been sitting around being used for Photoshop and Final Cut for YEARS. It's only been in my house for two years now.

I prefer it to the MBP. The screen resolution on the G5 is 1280x1024 while the MBP is only 1280x800. I like having that extra space. I also like it because it's 4:3 and my games on my emulators scale very well.

IMG_20120612_080202.jpg


I Really, really, really want a new monitor for the G5. The biggest one I could get even. It would be better than a dumb Retina screen. Anyone have any suggestions? :D
 
L

Liquinn

Suspended
Apr 10, 2011
3,016
57
Jessica Lares said:
Well, this machine was in the photo lab at school. The teacher got them like probably the month they came out. So it's been sitting around being used for Photoshop and Final Cut for YEARS. It's only been in my house for two years now.

I prefer it to the MBP. The screen resolution on the G5 is 1280x1024 while the MBP is only 1280x800. I like having that extra space. I also like it because it's 4:3 and my games on my emulators scale very well.

Image

I Really, really, really want a new monitor for the G5. The biggest one I could get even. It would be better than a dumb Retina screen. Anyone have any suggestions? :D
Click to expand...
True, fair enough :p How much did you pay for your G5?

Also, will a DVI 1900x1080 24" Samsung monitor work with the G5? Hehe, I can't wait to get my G5 :)
 
L

Liquinn

Suspended
Apr 10, 2011
3,016
57
Jessica Lares said:
I bought an iBook G3/466 SE around the same time I got the G5. Thinking about another iMac G4 (the machine my parents use, which was also free and dumped from the photo lab).
Click to expand...
I see. You got anymore recommendations on software I could put on it?

I see, why won't you buy another Intel Mac? They are expensive though ;(

Cheers ^_^
 
eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,775
26,843
My work G5 (see my signature) is running Adobe CS4, Acrobat 9 Pro, Acrobat 6 Pro and QuarkXPress 8.5.1.

CS4 and Acrobat 9.x Pro is the higest you can go with a PowerPC processor. I also have Toast Titanium 10 (again, the highest you can go). We use Microsoft Office 2008 (2011 is Intel only) and I have Diskwarrior 4.3.

As for browsers, there is TenFourFox and as of a few days ago, Aurorafox which is 10.5 Leopard only.

There's a FAQ that is stickied at the top of this page that will give you more browser/software options.
 
L

Liquinn

Suspended
Apr 10, 2011
3,016
57
eyoungren said:
My work G5 (see my signature) is running Adobe CS4, Acrobat 9 Pro, Acrobat 6 Pro and QuarkXPress 8.5.1.

CS4 and Acrobat 9.x Pro is the higest you can go with a PowerPC processor. I also have Toast Titanium 10 (again, the highest you can go). We use Microsoft Office 2008 (2011 is Intel only) and I have Diskwarrior 4.3.

As for browsers, there is TenFourFox and as of a few days ago, Aurorafox which is 10.5 Leopard only.

There's a FAQ that is stickied at the top of this page that will give you more browser/software options.
Click to expand...
Ahh. I'd probably have to buy software for the G5 then =)
 
Jessica Lares

Jessica Lares

macrumors G3
Oct 31, 2009
9,612
1,056
Near Dallas, Texas, USA
Liquinn said:
I see. You got anymore recommendations on software I could put on it?

I see, why won't you buy another Intel Mac? They are expensive though ;(

Cheers ^_^
Click to expand...

Well, what are you into? What will you use it for besides Photoshop? :D

I just bought an Intel Mac in December. I'm not buying another for a few years now. Trying to get an iPad before that time anyway.
 
L

Liquinn

Suspended
Apr 10, 2011
3,016
57
Jessica Lares said:
Well, what are you into? What will you use it for besides Photoshop? :D

I just bought an Intel Mac in December. I'm not buying another for a few years now. Trying to get an iPad before that time anyway.
Click to expand...
I'll be using it for light Photoshop and a file server for between My macs.

I'd love a Powerbook G4 but they're still expensive haha.

Thanks for the help though =]
 
eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,775
26,843
Liquinn said:
I'd love a Powerbook G4 but they're still expensive haha.
Click to expand...
What's your budget? I got my first 17" PB off eBay for $150 and my second for $250. That was two years ago

I bought my son a few months back a 1Ghz DVI Titanium for $25 off eBay and I bought my wife last year a 12" PowerBook for $50, plus $25 for a replacment screen (it rolled down a flight of stairs) from eBay as well.

I usually look for Macs on eBay that people mark as "for parts/repair" because usually the seller has no idea how minimal fixing certain things are a lot of the time and usually underprices the Mac.
 
W

wobegong

Guest
May 29, 2012
418
1
Maybe some repitiion here but on my G5 I have...

Office 2008
Photoshop CS4
Mactubes
Tenfourfox
Doom 3
Quake 4
Civilization IV
iLife '09
Aperture 2
Acrobat 9
Transmission (older version)
Skype (2.8)
Tenfourbird (thunderbird port for mail)
Elegato H.264 Turbo (with USB 'dongle')
VLC 2 (latest)
Airserver
Evernote
LogMeIn (as 10.5 doesn't support iCloud/FindMyMac)
Spotify (older version but still works)
 
TacticalDesire

TacticalDesire

macrumors 68020
Mar 19, 2012
2,286
23
Michigan
Jessica Lares said:
Well, this machine was in the photo lab at school. The teacher got them like probably the month they came out. So it's been sitting around being used for Photoshop and Final Cut for YEARS. It's only been in my house for two years now.

I prefer it to the MBP. The screen resolution on the G5 is 1280x1024 while the MBP is only 1280x800. I like having that extra space. I also like it because it's 4:3 and my games on my emulators scale very well.

Image

I Really, really, really want a new monitor for the G5. The biggest one I could get even. It would be better than a dumb Retina screen. Anyone have any suggestions? :D
Click to expand...
Do you have a budget? Also, what video card do you have? It shouldn't matter, but I just want to be sure.
 
Pici072

Pici072

macrumors newbie
May 3, 2012
4
0
Budapest, Hungary
I use the following apps perfectly with my QuadCore G5:

Final Cut Studio 2
Photoshop CS4
Aperture 2
iLife '09
iWork '09
Office 2008
VLC 2
Handbrake

Battlefield 1942
Call of Duty 2
:)
 
S

splitpea

macrumors 65816
Oct 21, 2009
1,134
396
Among the starlings
I like Camino for a browser on the G5.

I also used CS3 on it, and it ran Photoshop reasonably well, but Flash, Illustrator and InDesign were laggy. If you can find earlier versions, that might be better. I started on that machine with Photoshop 7, which ran like a dream, Illustrator 10, which was crashy, and the Macromedia MX suite (remember those days?)

iLife '05, MS Office 2004, Transmit 3, Adium 1.3-ish. My experience was that most software released after 2007 had poor performance on the G5, although you could still find new software that supported it until about 2009.
 
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