Help me make a decision

[EJBasile]

Hey everyone, sorry for the nondiscriptive title

I am asking this question on behalf of a tech. teacher (middle school) in my town.

The music teacher at the school is quite interested in GarageBand. He would like a computer that could run it so that would require a 600mhz+ G3, or a G4/G5. The schools computers consist of 500Mhz G3 iBooks, 333MHz to 400Mhz G3 iMacs, 400MHz Gigabit ethernet PowerMacs, and 700Mhz eMacs.

So obviously the only options are the G4 PMs and the eMacs. Anyways how would the 400mhz PM G4s with 256mb run GarageBand or the eMac 700mhz with 256mb of Ram. What would the speed difference be of an upgraded 1ghz PM vs. the 700mhz eMac?

It would be very hard to justify buying a new computer such as a 1.25GHz Mini or eMac in that the school is converting mainly to PCs. It may be hard to justify the cost of taking the eMac and buying the accessories for it- bigger HD, iLife '05, usb music keyboard, better speakers, etc.

To upgrade the G4 would be pretty pricey I am figuring $500 - $600 and a new mac mini is $800.

I think some points that can help justify this purchase is that it will never become obsolete because the teacher will not be doing extremely advanced stuff with it.

What do you guys suggest?

 

[Lacero]

I probably would sell a few of the machines, perhaps 2 or 3 and get the school a dual 1.8GHz G5 with at least 512MB to 1GB RAM. Perhaps look for a refurbished dualie. They are pretty cheap nowadays. GarageBand really needs the speed of the G5 and the 900Mhz FSB to be of any use. Anything under 1GHz is probably not enough to run GB.

 

[zelmo]

I probably would sell a few of the machines, perhaps 2 or 3 and get the school a dual 1.8GHz G5 with at least 512MB to 1GB RAM. Perhaps look for a refurbished dualie. They are pretty cheap nowadays. GarageBand really needs the speed of the G5 and the 900Mhz FSB to be of any use. Anything under 1GHz is probably not enough to run GB.

I don't know, my iMac G4 800/512 runs GB okay, as long as I don't pile on too many tracks. The eMac might be good enough with more RAM, as long as he plans to keep it simple.

 

[EJBasile]

I probably would sell a few of the machines, perhaps 2 or 3 and get the school a dual 1.8GHz G5 with at least 512MB to 1GB RAM. Perhaps look for a refurbished dualie. They are pretty cheap nowadays. GarageBand really needs the speed of the G5 and the 900Mhz FSB to be of any use. Anything under 1GHz is probably not enough to run GB.

Keep in mind this is for pretty basic use. I don't work for the school but I doubt they could easily sell computers, especially knowing the principal. I doubt a G5 is feasable but I'll see what I can do with upgrading a PM G4 to maybe 1.2ghz or 1.7ghz. I'm running GB on my 1.5ghz PowerBook and it seems to be running fine.

 

[dsharits]

The eMac should run it well enough for basic use. I use GB on my 1.2 GHz iBook, and it works great, with very few slow downs. It runs almost as well on my B&W, of course with significant upgrades, but still a 500 MHz G4. I would say that the PM upgraded to 800 MHz or 1 GHz would be fine.

Daniel