Advice on buying an Old School Mac - G4/G5

[Hakkera]

Hi all,

About a year ago I owned a nice polycarbonate white Macbook [I think it was the model previous to the current one - it had squareish corners, but still a c2d] Long story short I needed money and I didn't have a use for a laptop anymore, so I sold it and went back to using Windows, a situation I am still in today.

I defintely miss working with OSX, and whilst I don't have the money to replace a Quad Core PC with Dual Graphics Cards that runs CS5, I'd love to get an old Mac and fool about with it for every day tasks - Word processing, Using as a music library etc.

I'm not too bothered if I have a Laptop or a Desktop, as I doubt I'd move them around but iMacs are more expensive than Macbooks, so I'm wondering what would I would be best of spending my money on.

I have about £200-300 to spend on a second hand machine.

Any help would be much appreciated as I have no experience using non Intel machines.

Thanks.

 

[d88co88]

A G4 would be the best choice. Maybe an iMac G4? Then upgrade it yourself and you'll have a very usable computer. Get a 17 or 20 inch if you can find one, and make sure it has at least a 1 GHz processor, that still can barely survive in the modern world.

 

[Hakkera]

I'm looking around at the moment, and obviously I'd want something that could survive with reasonable integrity. I'm not sure about G4s, however a Mac Pro G5 can be obtained for about 250. Sure I'd have to buy a monitor and another keyboard and mouse, but I might be able to do that for £50. Anybody have any experience of working with G5 Pros? Can they still cut it today?

 

[Theclamshell]

I have a dual core G5 @ 2.3ghz. I am sure even a slower one would be okay for the things you mentioned.

BTW, it is called a Power Mac G5 not a Mac Pro G5