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Are you happy with your Mac or would you like something more powerful?

Ryan T.

Ryan T.

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 13, 2005
599
27
Rochester, NY
I was wondering how many parusing this forum are actually thinking about buying a new Mac. There seems to be 2 schools of though in the Apple community, either replace your hardware with the latest and greatest every revision, or buy a computer and hang onto it until it can barely run Safari.

Right now I have a 1.6GHz SP PowerMac G5. It's completely fast, and I don't need anything faster, but that doesn't stop me from looking at the new DP machines. I am not however, seriously thinking about upgrading.

What about you? What's your setup and do you want to upgrade soon? Do you like to cycle through hardware fast? Does your work mandate the latest and greatest or are you just a speed junkie?
 
I have a maxed out Mac Mini (see sig) and I'm happy with how it is performing. There are somethings that I'd like to be a little snappier and smooth such as Expose and Dashboard ripples, etc. However, that is nothing that affects the usability of my machine. I noticed that iMovie can lag when adding special effects but I almost never use it and was only working with it to see what it was all about. For my main uses: Mail, AdiumX, iTunes, Firefox, iPhoto, iCal, AddressBook, StarCraft, etc it performs well. I plan on keeping it for at least another 18-24 months. I expect my next Mac to be an Intel-based full tower Mac. I'm good at waiting and being practical with what I need in terms of computers, but would always welcome a more powerful machine now.

My PC is in much more dire need of an update - it's about four years old now. I've given it many updates and for its age and amount of usage it performs very well considering what I ask of it. I've been pleased with the machine but I've upgraded about all that I can and it just needs to be replaced. I plan on building a kick-ass X2-based system in the next 6 months to replace this machine, which will then run as a dedicated web server.
 
I have an 7 year old 233 mhz iMac (rev A) running OS 9, and it does most of what I need, so I hang onto it. I want a newer machine though, this one won't even take an iPod yet. But I figure I can wait a little while and see what comes out with the change over to intel. At that point I'll definiltey be getting something new.

But you know, I get more done faster on my old crappy iMac than my much newer wintel laptop at work. I just don't do very processor intensive things. If I did, I would have upgraded a long time ago.
 
I have two rules that have to appy before I upgrade:

1) System has been with me for at least 3 years
2) For a similar price as the original, I can get double the speed, RAM, etc. (this one is flexible of course)

I got an 800Mhz G3 iBook in May of 2003, so it is a little over two years old now. I play some games so I can tell the machine is not powerful, and iMovie takes a long time to render, etc.

However, my biggest issue is disk space. These babies came with 30GB HDs, and I lost count of how many times i had to archive stuff and move things to an external HD to make room for just VM files.

I keep checking the refurbished apple store, but sinces rules #1 and #2 do not apply yet. I want to keep a laptop, so I would probably end up adding a new machine.

If I could get a dual G5 today, I would :rolleyes: *sigh*

Oh, and if money grew on trees! :D
 
I think it has more to do with how much money you've got.

Everyone would like a new mac but not everyone can afford one and need to space their upgrades further apart.
 
I could afford to upgrade every year, but I don't. I just don't see the need -- I'm not using my mac for anything earth-shaking. I held on to my TiBook for nearly 4 years before upgrading, and I expect I'll hang on to this iBook for that long as well. With me, it tends to be the HD that goes first, so this time around I maxed out the HD. I'm hoping 80 GB will do me until this thing no longer runs current software. Otherwise I'll probably suffer through an HD upgrade before I upgrade the whole thing.
 
Perfectly happy and will be for a long time. :)

Before I had a 667 PowerMac G4, so while my old computer was getting long in the tooth, it still had life for everyday tasks. I sold it to buy my PowerBook, which is a route I think a lot of Mac users go. Macs have excellent resale value (for a computer).
 
Ryan T. said:
I was wondering how many parusing this forum are actually thinking about buying a new Mac. There seems to be 2 schools of though in the Apple community, either replace your hardware with the latest and greatest every revision, or buy a computer and hang onto it until it can barely run Safari.

Right now I have a 1.6GHz SP PowerMac G5. It's completely fast, and I don't need anything faster, but that doesn't stop me from looking at the new DP machines. I am not however, seriously thinking about upgrading.

What about you? What's your setup and do you want to upgrade soon? Do you like to cycle through hardware fast? Does your work mandate the latest and greatest or are you just a speed junkie?
Click to expand...

I think it depends what you use the system(s) for. I'm mainly a business application user, i.e. no games, photoshop or DVD authoring, so my 1.33GHz PB and G5 iMac will be perfectly adequate for some time. If your usage includes power hungry applications then more frequent upgrades make sense.
 
strider42 said:
I have an 7 year old 233 mhz iMac (rev A) running OS 9, and it does most of what I need, so I hang onto it. I want a newer machine though, this one won't even take an iPod yet. But I figure I can wait a little while and see what comes out with the change over to intel. At that point I'll definiltey be getting something new.
Click to expand...

I'm curious, is your 7 year old iMac still all the original hardware? I have a dual 450 Power Mac G4 that i purchased in September 2000. So it's almost 5 years old. The only thing that I have added is memory.

Because of age a new Mac is on my mind.
 
When I had a PC, I used them until they died and replaced them. That was mainly because I didn't care as long as they did what I wanted and I didn't keep up to date with PC technology until it came time to buy a new one.

With my Mac, and thanks to MR, I keep far more up to date with what's going on and I'm more likely to want newer models faster - that's particularly true when case designs/features change.

I did read an interesting viewpoint from someone who said that it made sense to upgrade your Mac every other upgrade (so I guess every 6-9 months). His argument was that if you spent £1600 on a Powerbook and sold it after 7 months, you'd probably still get £1300 for it. You pay an extra £300 and get a new Powerbook with new features and a new 12 month warranty.

After 3 years, you'd have paid out another £1500 but you'd have had the latest/greatest hardware for the last 3 years and only be dropping a few hundred pounds at a time. If you'd stuck with the original Powerbook, you might be struggling to run new apps, its value would be minimal and it would be closer to hard drive failures etc and you'd be looking at dropping that £1500 in one hit to replace it.
 
wdlove said:
I'm curious, is your 7 year old iMac still all the original hardware? I have a dual 450 Power Mac G4 that i purchased in September 2000. So it's almost 5 years old. The only thing that I have added is memory.

Because of age a new Mac is on my mind.
Click to expand...
I had a dual 450 up until I got my new powermac. I loved that thing.
 
my rules (that are somewhat flexible of course):

1. -my system is 3 years old.
2. -the new system is twice as fast for the same price as the old system.
3. -i plan to spend enough time on the machine to justify the money.
4. -there is some new functionality aside of speed (new OS, new software that doesn't run on the old system, bluetooth, larger monitor....).
5. -i can afford the new system easily, can pay cash.


i had my IIsi five years, my old powermac for 5 years, had 2 years only a intel box from work, have my PB for a year. my situation is a little bit different now because i want either an imac or a larger monitor soon. but speed alone is not the reason.

only rule number five is fix, all others are flexible.
 
I'm perfectly happy. I just purchased a Dual 2.3 despite the "Intel Macs", and I'm perfectly happy. The computers great, and so is the speed. It does everythinbg I want it to do and more. The current lineup is still good enough, just buy one.
 
I upgrade quickly. I'm on my 5th mac in 5 years (always one at a time). :) I sell the old one while it still has pretty good value and consequently get a new one for relatively cheap.

My current machine is a 1.8 Ghz rev. A G5 tower, and it's definitely fast enough for everything I do. I could actually see hanging on to this one for quite a while, but that won't be possible as I'm going back to school in a few months and will need to go portable again.
 
I'm 100% happy with my Powerbook. It does everything that I want it to do. My only wish is that the battery wouldn't have lost all of its oomph. Now it only holds a 2 hour charge :(
 
I am still running my 5 year old iMac G3: 500MHz, 640mb RAM (added a 512 stick), new 80GB HD. The machine is still fast for my needs (mainly just office, internet, and iMovie stuff). I was going to upgrade to a new iMac G5 or Powerbook for college but i am going to wait on the new intel machines.
 
My current computers are a Rev B Power Mac Dual G5 1.8 GHz/ATI Radeon 9800 XT and a PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz 15" I intend keeping these at least until the AppleCare runs out on them, which should take me to the Rev B Intel Power Macs I hope and then I'll make my mind up about upgrading or not. OS X seems to run better each upgrade so I might even wait until the Rev Cs. Both machines do what I want now, and I've settled on the software I need so there will need to be a massive slowing down of the OS for me to upgrade.

So I've taken a wait and see attitude, and to be honest I can't wait to see what Apple do with Intel. Great times ahead!
 
I have a 5 year old PowerMac G4 Sawtooth. I upgraded the video card, maxed the RAM and gave it a new 1GHz processor. It's great! I run Tiger (thanks to those of you who helped me with that last night), Adobe CS, and Quark 6 with no problems. I will buy a dual G5 before the Intels come out, as I believe they'll have lots of problems at first. But I will shed a tear when the Sawtooth goes. It has been one hell of a workhorse.
 
i love to stay on top of things when it comes to technology and i have my 12" 1.33 ghz powerbook G4 that i can't WAIT to upgrade, i've had it for about a year and a bit. and i've loved it, i want at least 2 ghz though. i can't get a desktop because i move between two houses every week, i neeeeeeeeeeeeed a laptop and i neeeeeeeeeeeeed it to be a mac but i dooooooooooooon't want to have to wait another year before i see a 2 ghz (probably intel by then) processor in a powerbook :mad:
 
biohazard_6969 said:
i love to stay on top of things when it comes to technology and i have my 12" 1.33 ghz powerbook G4 that i can't WAIT to upgrade, i've had it for about a year and a bit. and i've loved it, i want at least 2 ghz though. i can't get a desktop because i move between two houses every week, i neeeeeeeeeeeeed a laptop and i neeeeeeeeeeeeed it to be a mac but i dooooooooooooon't want to have to wait another year before i see a 2 ghz (probably intel by then) processor in a powerbook :mad:
Click to expand...

What do you do with your powerbook that makes you want to update, out of curiosity?
 
Ryan T. said:
What about you? What's your setup and do you want to upgrade soon? Do you like to cycle through hardware fast? Does your work mandate the latest and greatest or are you just a speed junkie?
Click to expand...

Currently have 2.3GHz DP Power Mac G5
1GB Dual Channel DDR400 (looking to upgrade to 3GB in the near future)
128MB ATI Radeon 9600 (looking to put in a ATI X850XT when they become available)

I usually keep a computer for 2-3 years and then buy a new one. For my next Mac (desktop) I will probably buy the top of the line rev B intel Power Mac when it comes out.
 
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