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Good deal? iMac G4 for $75

macgeek18

macgeek18

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 8, 2009
1,847
733
Northern California
Hey all,did I get a good deal on this iMac G4? It's a 800Mhz 15" G4 with 256MB ram,and a 60GB HD. Literally no scratches at all anywhere on it and it's running the original Mac OSX 10.2.8. It doesn't have an Airport card but that's an easy fix and I have a couple PC133 DIMM's in a drawer that should fit to max it out with 1GB of ram. Just wondering if I scored? I also got it's original keyboard and mouse.
 
That's a good deal. I'm pretty sure that you'll only be able to run Tiger, but that should be plenty.
 
Yes! For roughly the equivalent cost in my currency, I bought a 700mhz imac g4 for my Son's first computer recently and it's excellent. I feel I got a real bargain. I upgraded the ram to 1GB (the 512mb dimm cost £3 on ebay) and he can use it to waddle around club penguin, play games on macmame, make slideshows on iphoto and use some simple art programs. Office apps and Photoshop CS1 run absolutely fine on it too, but that's a bit beyond his age/ability. I'd have no problem using it myself for most things. It has tiger installed by the way.

The only problem I found was that new versions of flash are probably the main factor in making old computers like this obsolete. Youtube is pathetically slow with flash 9 or 10 on this computer. However, it is fine and smooth with flash 8, but that breaks support for other flash sites like club penguin.

There may be a workaround to get the best of both worlds, but in the end, I installed flash 9 and limited my Son's usage to only club penguin (which is his homepage) using the parental controls. He is 8 years old and I don't want him browsing youtube or google unsupervised anyway.

It is pretty frustrating that, if you keep flash up-to-date like it tells you to, you need a relative powerhouse computer to watch dancing cat and annoying orange videos. Freezing web video is one of the main factors in most people deciding they 'need' to upgrade and throwing away a perfectly good computer. Flash encourages us to be so wasteful. :-(

As I say, there may be a workaround for the youtube/flash issue. I did find lots of discussion about it, but I gave up in the end. Youtube will work great with flash 8 though so if that's important to you, you can use that version and maybe even swap back and forth, to and from flash 9 when necessary.

One last thing. Your dimm memory will probably be compatible with the imac's "internal slot", but not the "user accessible slot". You can access the internal slot pretty easily with a torx screwdriver, but be sure to find a guide before doing this. You can put a maximum of a single 512MB dimm in the internal slot and you would need a SO-DIMM module to expand beyond that by using the user accessible slot.
 
Last edited:
Last month I bought a used G4 800MHz, 768M RAM, 17" with aircard for $100 on Craigslist....I watched the guy drop the price from $200 to $175 to $150...then I asked him if he'd take $100 and he said yes.

I upgraded it to 1 GB RAM, a 7200 RPM 120 GB drive and Leopard...it's a cute little box.
 
fhall1 said:
Last month I bought a used G4 800MHz, 768M RAM, 17" with aircard for $100 on Craigslist....I watched the guy drop the price from $200 to $175 to $150...then I asked him if he'd take $100 and he said yes.

I upgraded it to 1 GB RAM, a 7200 RPM 120 GB drive and Leopard...it's a cute little box.
Click to expand...

Same here,it was posted for $150,then 100, and then $75 and I jumped on it. I go pick it up tomorrow and I hope it's optical drive isn't dead.
Tiger here I come,I had Tiger on my PowerMac dual booting with leopard and then deleted it for time machine backup. Legacy support should be nice. :)
 
hmmm
I got a PowerMac dual G5 for $250 :D
using it as a OpenVPN server and web host :D
it even plays 1080p movies without lag, which I must say is astonishing!
 
I'm going to go get my iMac today! nshould be ordering upgrades for it tomorrow. This thing is going to be a iTunes,movie,web surfer machine by my bead once the airport card comes. :)
 
Hey guys,I got my new iMac and love it,I just finshed upgrading it to 768MB of ram,(bought it with 256MB),and I'm currently upgrading Tiger on it. This thing is so fast and I missed good old PowerPC machines. Also,this machine still has the original plastic on it!! It has a factory piece of plastic on the arm and it looks new! I also got all the original disks,books and box!! for $75!! Best purchase I ever made!!Pics later.
 
pubjoe said:
Yes! For roughly the equivalent cost in my currency, I bought a 700mhz imac g4 for my Son's first computer recently and it's excellent. I feel I got a real bargain. I upgraded the ram to 1GB (the 512mb dimm cost £3 on ebay) and he can use it to waddle around club penguin, play games on macmame, make slideshows on iphoto and use some simple art programs. Office apps and Photoshop CS1 run absolutely fine on it too, but that's a bit beyond his age/ability. I'd have no problem using it myself for most things. It has tiger installed by the way.

The only problem I found was that new versions of flash are probably the main factor in making old computers like this obsolete. Youtube is pathetically slow with flash 9 or 10 on this computer. However, it is fine and smooth with flash 8, but that breaks support for other flash sites like club penguin.

There may be a workaround to get the best of both worlds, but in the end, I installed flash 9 and limited my Son's usage to only club penguin (which is his homepage) using the parental controls. He is 8 years old and I don't want him browsing youtube or google unsupervised anyway.

It is pretty frustrating that, if you keep flash up-to-date like it tells you to, you need a relative powerhouse computer to watch dancing cat and annoying orange videos. Freezing web video is one of the main factors in most people deciding they 'need' to upgrade and throwing away a perfectly good computer. Flash encourages us to be so wasteful. :-(

As I say, there may be a workaround for the youtube/flash issue. I did find lots of discussion about it, but I gave up in the end. Youtube will work great with flash 8 though so if that's important to you, you can use that version and maybe even swap back and forth, to and from flash 9 when necessary.

One last thing. Your dimm memory will probably be compatible with the imac's "internal slot", but not the "user accessible slot". You can access the internal slot pretty easily with a torx screwdriver, but be sure to find a guide before doing this. You can put a maximum of a single 512MB dimm in the internal slot and you would need a SO-DIMM module to expand beyond that by using the user accessible slot.
Click to expand...

I know about the RAM,I put a PB G4 Ti DIMM in the user friendly slot on like five minutes and it trippled the stock RAM. I'm fine with 768MB of ram so I'm not to worried about going up to 1GB. It's just a web surfer and Word machine. i'm on it now while my Core i3 pc is just sitting in my backpack not even getting used since I got this bad boy yesterday. The pc will be gone once i'm done with school. Aiming for a 21" iMac in January to taker care of my Mac "needs" till I get my i5 15" MBP. :)
 
mulo said:
hmmm
I got a PowerMac dual G5 for $250 :D
using it as a OpenVPN server and web host :D
it even plays 1080p movies without lag, which I must say is astonishing!
Click to expand...

I got a dual 1.8 G5 for $100. Turned around and sold it a month later and that's when I bought my MacBook.Which I had to sell to buy a pc for school..
 
fhall1 said:
Last month I bought a used G4 800MHz, 768M RAM, 17" with aircard for $100 on Craigslist....I watched the guy drop the price from $200 to $175 to $150...then I asked him if he'd take $100 and he said yes.

I upgraded it to 1 GB RAM, a 7200 RPM 120 GB drive and Leopard...it's a cute little box.
Click to expand...

That's a good deal. I just bought the same machine for $100. I think you got a damn good deal. A few years ago, I told myself I'd have one of those iMacs, because they were simply my favorite, and the best designed computer. Ever. Now I own 2 - and love them. :)

Interestingly enough, my 1.25ghz one has the same factory plastic on the arm, but the power button looks like a dog ate it. I can't want for a reason to pop it open and get then new one I have in there. It will truly look brand new again. :)

(That is, unless you use the audio input jack. My guitar blew it. Thanks for suggesting I switch cables, Apple. :mad:)
 
Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy #$%^!!!!!!!!!! That is an aswome deal I got Mine (Same Spes Too) for $150!!!!!!! THAT IS CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP,CHEAP for a computer.:D

Imac G4 800mhz>MacBook Unibody 2008,2.0ghz>Apple //CI,?????? :apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple:HI :apple::apple::apple::apple::apple:
 
Uh, ok. I don't how to respond to the post above, but it's obvious you love iMac G4's.

I paid $100 for my 17" iMac G4, and I think that was a fair deal. I really haven't used it much because Tiger is a dog with 256MB of RAM, but luckily my 512MB stick is coming in the mail sometime next week. It should be much more usable afterwards.
 
yeah mate, great price, there great boxen, as long as you dont ask too much from them. :)

harddrive speed is really important, if you have old 7200rpm or 10k raptor lying around, it will make a heck of a diff....

anyways, good luck with it and stick with tiger. :)
 
Thats a good deal, but only because its an iLamp (For a similar amount of UK currency I got my Dual 867 G4)... I still need to get one *looks at bank balance in despair* :cool:
 
sounds like a great deal to me, saw one last fall at a ham fest for $85.00 but the seller wouldnt let me power it up to see if it worked and ham fests are like flea markets, have to kinda trust the person selling it. you could probably put leopard on it too.
 
g4 powerbookboy said:
sounds like a great deal to me, saw one last fall at a ham fest for $85.00 but the seller wouldnt let me power it up to see if it worked and ham fests are like flea markets, have to kinda trust the person selling it. you could probably put leopard on it too.
Click to expand...

He could easily put Leopard on it. (I have 10.5 on a 450Mhz G4 with its original 16MB Graphics - works ok with 1GB RAM, and on a 700Mhz eMac, with original graphics and 128MB RAM - works fine, if slowly, on that as well).
 
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