Upgrade Paradigm
My band recorded a demo and a full-length album at a studio belonging to a college friend of mine. He's a dedicated Mac guy, and this is how he approaches upgrades.
First of all, he lives by the maxim that no computer is obsolete if it still does the job you originally bought it for. Rather than costly and occasionally twitchy CPU upgrades, he usually maxes out the RAM on a system and that's it. If he needs more computing horsepower for a particular application, he buys a new system. That probably happens every 3-4 years or so. But he never sells the old systems--he just keeps them doing what they've been doing as dedicated stations.
For example: he does audio engineering, web design, CD-ROM authoring, and DV editing. His top-of-the-line sytem will be doing his FCP work while his older DP G4 system is doing the CD-ROM/web authoring, an older G3 system is doing the audio production work, and an old-school beige G3 is doing two-track audio mastering. He remains continually productive with lots of built-in redundancy if one system or the other goes down (in theory, anyway--his Macs rarely crash).
Seems to me that people take financial baths every time they a) sell an older unit, or b) do a pricey CPU upgrade. The longer you keep a system working productively, the more money you recoup from your original investment of the machine.
I have a G3/400 Pismo w/1GB RAM. The Powerlogix G3/900 upgrade for about $350 looks good, but I have an optical drive that is beginning to give me trouble and a battery that's completely fried. Add those things up and I could get a refurb'ed iBook from Apple for the same money as juicing up my Pismo, and while I LOVE this system, I can't justify the expense.
The people who always need the bleeding edge should really just ask one question before upgrading a system, whether a CPU upgrade or a whole new unit:
"Does my current system productively perform those tasks I ask of it?"
If the answer is "yes," then hang on to your cash. My Pismo will always be more than capable of surfing the web, word processing, etc. In that sense it will never be "obsolete." Plus it looks cool and has proven to be more or less indestructable (dropped a few times on a hardwood floor with no ill effect, perfect display w/no dead/stuck pixels, etc).
If the answer is "no," then pony up the dough to get the best. In the field of video production or graphic design, speed increases mean faster turn-arounds, which means meeting closer deadlines, which means a better reputation, which means more clients and more money. At $100/hr for production work, a small percentage improvement can pay for itself very quickly.
Just my thoughts on the subject. I view computers as tools, not status symbols or the embodiment of phallic overcompensation. Having the best/fastest system only helps when I need the best to get productive work accomplished--otherwise it is an expensive and extremely temporary ego boost I don't need.
) you would need to add a Parallel ATA (ATA/66, 100, 133 etc.) card, unless your current drives are Serial ATA (that's what the G5 uses).
