Regretting Buying Powermac G4 Dual

[seamuskrat]

For $300.00 you have a rock solid Mac. That generation of Mac was bulletproof. They are extremely expandable. You can actually upgrade them to a 1.42 DUAL processor, over a gig of ram, new AGP card, and any size hard drive. Of course, you will spend some cash to breath new life into the box, but you could and that makes it a valuable machine.

If you take your $300, add RAM, a moderate hard drive and a CPU upgrade, you could price it out for what a new Mini costs and be arguably faster.

For another $400 you could add a dual 1.0, 200 gig drive and 512 RAM. Your machine would be faster than a stock mini and have more expandability.

Just consider the benefits of the machine.

I am kind of regretting buying my powermac g4 dual 500. I know in less then a year they will be updated to intel and the powermac g4 will be garbage. I also need to buy all kinds of upgrades

Hard drive
Tiger
More ram
And so on.

Do you think it's worth the upgrades it needs? Or should I save up and buy a quiksilver or mirrored drive doors?

Do you think that it will be outdated and can’t be able to use. Now I have to wait for the holidays to get all kinds of upgrades, boy I wanted a new canon.
I only paid 300.00 I still don’t think I got a good deal. I always hear my dad saying “I think that computer for him was a waste of money has he even been using it” I’m really mad, I think it’s a piece of JUNK! Do you think I got a good deal? Boy 9.2 really is making me use my XP more then the apple? I’m almost ready to sell it back on eBay! What yall think?

I think I might go back to windows! I wish not, but I don't know what to expect with tiger?

 

[forumBuddy]

"So is this true or did i just wast 300.00 on a piece of crap?"

Yep, you're sure did!

Sorry, just had to say it You would've been better off getting a MacMini with more than twice the performance in most cases, Tiger, more memory and better form factor. Then, upgrading to Mactel machines when they come out.

 

[Aliquis]

If you're still feeling sad about your purchase, I have a friend who may be willing to buy your dual 500. He needs a server in his house. Where would it have to ship from?

Also, he's a wholeseller who may be able to get you a really good deal on a mac mini.

Email me with any info.

aliquisdesign@gmail.com

 

[CmdrLaForge]

I haven't read through all the replys but - man sell that machine and get a mini. Much better. Even for Videostuff.

 

[crazysaxchris]

well now I think I'm going to keep it, but in the future in (late 2006) I'll probably update that. I'll look for cheap upgardes at the holiday time, seeing that I'll probably need them.

 

[disconap]

For $300.00 you have a rock solid Mac. That generation of Mac was bulletproof. They are extremely expandable. You can actually upgrade them to a 1.42 DUAL processor, over a gig of ram, new AGP card, and any size hard drive. Of course, you will spend some cash to breath new life into the box, but you could and that makes it a valuable machine.

If you take your $300, add RAM, a moderate hard drive and a CPU upgrade, you could price it out for what a new Mini costs and be arguably faster.

For another $400 you could add a dual 1.0, 200 gig drive and 512 RAM. Your machine would be faster than a stock mini and have more expandability.

Just consider the benefits of the machine.

A 200 gig harddrive on that gen of machine would also require a PCI card to read it, unless you want to run it as a 132gig drive...

 

[QCassidy352]

I'm going to go against the grain here and say don't just buy panther/tiger; I'd say resell it and get a mini. The powermac very expandable and could be made in to a pretty capable machine, but for what it will cost, you could have a much more modern mac.

 

[disconap]

True. It all depends what you need it to do. Hard drives are cheap as hell, and OSX and RAM are both cheap on ebay (go for 10.3, again I've found it's the all around best for the first gen G4s). If you're just talking a mid level home machine for email/internet, then yeah, sell it (you can probably get close to what you paid, or possibly more, on ebay) and get a mini. If you want to do intensive stuff on it, it's a crapshoot, but I still advise keeping it and upgrading it as it needs to be upgraded...

 

[RatVega]

I am kind of regretting buying my powermac g4 dual 500. I know in less then a year they will be updated to intel and the powermac g4 will be garbage. I also need to buy all kinds of upgrades

Hard drive
Tiger
More ram
And so on.

Do you think it's worth the upgrades it needs? Or should I save up and buy a quiksilver or mirrored drive doors?

Do you think that it will be outdated and can’t be able to use. Now I have to wait for the holidays to get all kinds of upgrades, boy I wanted a new canon.
I only paid 300.00 I still don’t think I got a good deal. I always hear my dad saying “I think that computer for him was a waste of money has he even been using it” I’m really mad, I think it’s a piece of JUNK! Do you think I got a good deal? Boy 9.2 really is making me use my XP more then the apple? I’m almost ready to sell it back on eBay! What yall think?

I think I might go back to windows! I wish not, but I don't know what to expect with tiger?

It will be two years (or near enough) before there is a Intel-based PowerMac dualie (or greater) and you won't want to afford that one either.

You bought a Mac from a different century... but that doesn't mean it isn't usable. There are differences between obsolete, usable, and fast. All my G4s are "obsolete", some are still "fast" (my 1.42GHz G4 dualie will outrun my stepson's iMac G5) and all are still "usable". They all run FCP and do a good job.

All the comments about getting OS X and more RAM are good advice. A Mac likes RAM and runs faster/better. But video editing takes other resources too - you'll need/want a LOT more storage (DV is 13.5GB/hour just for the raw clips) All my machines have at least two internal drives and an external. All have more than 1GB RAM. All have dual monitors. If you're serious about cutting some video, the processor speed of the box is the least of your problems.

Hotrodding legend Ed Iskendarian once said "Speed costs money, how fast can you afford to go?" This applies to computers too...

 

[revisionA]

totally bogus

Ditch it.

Dont upgrade it all to hell when you can buy an ibook for 999 thats faster or a mini for 499 thats faster... choose either and dont look back.

Intel on Mac doesnt mean PPC on Mac is going to die instantly.

There is a huge PPC installed base and Apple knows they need to support PPC for at least five years to keep from horrible backlash from their customers who spent several grand on their dual processor machines in the last decade.

$

 

[crazysaxchris]

I think I'm going to sell it, if I go in the mac world, I should get a good machine, maybe even new! Well here are the specs

Powermac G4 500 Dual Gigabit Ethernet
40 gb
512 RAM
one damaged usb port
os 9.2
no other acceserios

how much? ( Please more then 300.00 )


Well what do you think I should get after this if I sell it

mac mini
ibook (love em)
imac g4 or g5
powermac mirroed doors

700.00 AT THE MOST! (well maybe a little more )

Thanks yall for your help!

 

[MarkCollette]

How much RAM does it have right now? How large is the hard drive?

 

[leekohler]

OK- first of all don't kick yourself. I have a five+ year-old Powermac G4 350Mhz that I bought on eBay 5 years ago for $900. Over the years, I upgraded the processor to a single 1Ghz, RAM to 1.75 Gb, video card to 64 Mb Radeon 9000 Pro, and HDD to 7200 RPM. It still kicks and is plenty fast. You have a DP PowerMac. I think with more RAM, OS X, and maybe a new video card, you'll be doing fine. Mine still seems faster than my year-old iBook.

 

[MacTruck]

I think I'm going to sell it, if I go in the mac world, I should get a good machine, maybe even new! Well here are the specs

Powermac G4 500 Dual Gigabit Ethernet
40 gb
512 RAM
one damaged usb port
os 9.2
no other acceserios

how much? ( Please more then 300.00 )

What? $300 for that POS?




Just kidding.

 

[kingtj]

My thoughts....

I've done quite a bit of work with older Macs, because I had a job several years ago refurbing donated ones from schools. At that time, I only owned a Windows PC at home, so I became really interested in making one of these older systems run OS X reasonably well and building it for my own personal use.

After quite a bit of toying around with various options along those lines, I finally splurged and bought a brand new dual 1.42Ghz MDD PowerMac, about 5 months before the G5's were released.

My opinion? The dual 1.42Ghz MDD G4 is *NOT* a very good Mac. Stay away from this one - unless you're getting it so cheap, you can't refuse. Basically, it seemed to be an overclocked 1.2Ghz dual G4 tower, with Apple slapping a bigger heatsink with "heat pipes" on them to try to keep it cool. It wasn't real effective. If you used it in a warm room, it would quickly show signs of overheating. I had everything from green "sparklies" randomly drawing all over my Cinema display to the machine randomly freezing up with the spinning beach-ball. I took it in for repair at one point. Apple kept it a full week before handing it back, claiming "nothing seemed to be wrong with it". (Nonetheless, it came back with all my system preferences trashed and an empty dock. Makes me wonder why someone deleted all of that on a machine they saw "nothing wrong with" at all? More likely, it crashed and messed up its preferences while it was on the test bench, but they never found a reason why or could consistently duplicate the issue - just like it did with me!)

(I ended up selling the thing and got a dual 2.0Ghz G5 - and never looked back. But that's a lot of $'s too!)

I'd also say that sticking with an older Mac makes a lot of sense only if you're doing graphics work that you're comfortable doing in old versions of the software. (EG. I knew a graphics designer who still used MacOS 9.1 all the time and was very frustrated when his old PowerMac 7500 finally died and he had to upgrade to OS X. BUT - he was content using software like Illustrator v5 and Photoshop v3! He did great work in them too. For him, it was simply all he needed to make a living.... In his case, I think the G4 733Mhz tower he bought was a mistake. He would have been happier with another used PowerMac 7500/7600 off eBay or something.)

I agree with the people who suggested a Mac Mini for the original poster. The graphic is the weakest thing on the Mini - but really, only related to fast screen updates when playing 3D games and such. Most "graphics design" work is more concerned with the ability to run in "millions of colors" at a high resolution. My Mini (owned one briefly) worked fine in 16 million color graphics mode at 1600x1200 resolution on a 21" Samsung LCD - so that should be plenty for most people!

Oh and by the way never regret getting a mac, especially a dual no matter what the speed. Dual cpu is the only way to go unless you go quad.

 

[CTSxViper]

At this point, you have already invested in the dual 500, so I would recommend looking for the most economical way to update the machine to the point that you will be happy with it for several years. Most processor upgrades will represent a substanial investment, so I would hold off on that and look for inexpensive RAM and a cheap hard drive. Both of those will make your system feel faster and offer the most value.

My "second" Apple is a dual 450 with 1GB of RAM and it seems fairly fast to me. I replaced the original hard drive with a $29 after rebate 7200RPM 120GB from Office Depot and am very satisified.

The neat thing with your system is that you can easily add very inexpensive extra hard drives. Also a lowcost DVD burner from Newegg.

Be patient and look for very low cost upgrades so that you don't substantially increase your investment.

Unlike the mini, your system has multiple RAM slots, so check with friends and neighbors that have old PC's and see if you can find cheap memory updates. If you find either 256MB or 512MB PC100 upgrades it will help a bunch.

As recommended by almost everyone else ditch the old OS and find a good student deal on OS X.

Agreed.. Good sound advice..

 

[cubist]

I'd keep it, but don't spend any money on it, other than getting Panther. You should be able to find the PC100 RAM sticks for it FREE from PC users.

Panther will make that machine run faster and better. No question. Import your CDs in iTunes, connect some speakers, and have some fun.

I would not buy a new Mac at this time if I were you. Intel-based machines are about to come out, and the Mini may possibly be the first new model.

 

[cube]

I have 576MiB of RAM and it is more than enough for basic use.

 

[seamuskrat]

I have a 350 Sawtooth (upgraded to 1.25) that runs a 200 gig at 187 just fine.

No PCI card.

A 200 gig harddrive on that gen of machine would also require a PCI card to read it, unless you want to run it as a 132gig drive...

 

[cube]

I have a 350 Sawtooth (upgraded to 1.25) that runs a 200 gig at 187 just fine.

Those are 187 GiB. That's 200GB.

 

[Dane D.]

My opinion? The dual 1.42Ghz MDD G4 is *NOT* a very good Mac.

I agree, I maintain a dual 867 mirrored door unit here at work (advertising agency) running OS 9.2.2. Nothing but crashes and other abnormalities. I suppose if it were running OS 10.3.9 it might be more stable. We are forced to run OS 9 because the powers that be, don't believe in constant upgrading. Plus our software is all OS 9 (QuarkXpress, Photoshop, Illustrator). Personnally, I would of bought the machine and put all the RAM I could afford to purchase. Install OS 10.3.9 and upgrade with multiple higher capacity HDs. And add another fan, they run hot.

 

[camomac]

i would sell it. just from the mere fact that you have regret tells me that you are unhappy. sell it for as much as you can get (even if you lose a little $.) Save a little and buy a mac mini. that sound like what alot of people here are saying aswell.

HOWEVER i don't think that it is a POS.
(although the damaged USB is a little concerning.)

 

[disconap]

I have a 350 Sawtooth (upgraded to 1.25) that runs a 200 gig at 187 just fine.

No PCI card.

Weird. My Sawtooth would only recognize 132 (128 or so actual), and all the documentation I could find said that that's normal. Do you have it partitioned into parts smaller than 132? If not, that's awesome...

 

[Laser47]

I think I'm going to sell it, if I go in the mac world, I should get a good machine, maybe even new! Well here are the specs

Powermac G4 500 Dual Gigabit Ethernet
40 gb
512 RAM
one damaged usb port
os 9.2
no other acceserios

how much? ( Please more then 300.00 )


Well what do you think I should get after this if I sell it

mac mini
ibook (love em)
imac g4 or g5
powermac mirroed doors

700.00 AT THE MOST! (well maybe a little more )

Thanks yall for your help!

I love the Imac G4 and the PM MDD

 

[VanMac]

Can you please slap your dad for me? I got my 2 yr old son a mac mini and it was the best thing I have ever done. When my 3 month old gets up and touches the mouse he gets one too. A computer in this day and age is a must have for anyone. You really can't live without one. Well yøu can but you can also take a dump outside and wipe with leaves.

Computer in every home? F that, I got one in every room.

Exactly.

I have 3 kids, and 5 computers. Gonna be 6 by the end of the year (computers that is ) (Quad baby)