I'm really curious about older Macs wondering....

[G51989]

Now, as you know in the other threads I've made, I've got a Dual 1.8gzh G5, and while it has won a place on my legacy desk ( yes, I have a Desk with a Athlon 3400+ and a Packard Bell 486 with a OVERDRIVE DX4 WOOOOOOOO, Xp Compatibly mode only goes so far, this beast is running Windows 95 ), and I will fully admit, any time I'm not playing a new game, or working, I'm on the Mac constantly, so don't be lashing out at me for knocking these older macs, I'm really not, I'm just curious as to what some of you guys do with these older Macs, and I am NOT talking about G5s, G5s are pretty awesome and I LOVE mine, I would never task it to do what I do as a job ( for the sense it doesn't have CLOSE to the amount of power and ram I need, and all my programs are windows 7 only lol ). But I LOVE it for the fact that, they were new when I was in high school, and I always wanted one, now I have one, and all these games my parents didn't let me buy at the time, and I missed, I can now play. Epic, I love mah G5. Use it all the time. Until I need to go to bed and Netflix some Star Trek, then its night night lol.

But, I see alot of you guys are Using G4s and G3s. I'm just really curious as to how capable they are and what you do with them exactly?

My XP Pro Machine, is a AMD athlon 3400+, 4 gigs of DDR400 ram, a 350gb hard drive, DVD Burner, back in its time its a good machine. Now, I use this computer from time to time, as I have a TON of older games on it, TONS of pictures movies, videos, save files ect, And even for basic stuff, like browsing, or editing, or music, or ect ect alot of normal stuff, I get a decent amount of slow down, and this is a fresh XP install. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Now, I consider a system with that specs to FAR exceed a G3 or G4 Mac, am I missing something about these systems?

 

[eawmp1]

It's the beauty of a classic design. Sure, other than mail and word processing and vintage programs, it doesn't see much use. I've long sinced moved past this, but I will never sell it.

 

[92WardSenatorFE]

I have to agree, their designs are unique and they are still pretty capable machines if you can look past youtube/ flash usage. I have an iMac G4 that I use as my secondary machine, it boots up a lot faster than my PC and its really useful to get on and use if I just need to check my email, etc. I haven't had any problems with it, and in fact, I've even started using it to edit short length videos in iMovie and it still does great.

As far as G3's, I have an iBook G3 which I'm working on fixing. I got it for dirt cheap and plan on using it to take notes for school, etc... and not have to worry about it getting broken. I haven't really had the opportunity to see how it performs yet with Tiger, but running 10.1 it seemed like it would do OK for what I'm going to use it for.

Obviously the older you get, the more limited you are. But you will still find a lot of people using even Macs older than G3's on a regular basis. Some people use them for nostalgia, some people use them for software that is not available on newer Macs (i.e., hypercard), retro gaming, and then also people just for the fun of it. I personally don't own any machines like this, but I know for a fact the people that do have those Macs enjoy them.

 

[eyoungren]

I have a PowerMac 7300/200. For the last eight years it's been at work functioning as an Applescript server. Moving proofs and editorial pages around (I work for a newspaper) and processing editorial photos.

There's a 6500/225 in my garage. It's a game machine for my kids and a test bed for various OS9 required projects.

My coworker is using a G4 that the company has had for 12 years. She uses it (like me) for ad design and page composition. We have another G4 and it's taken the place of my 7300 to function as an Applescript server.

I have one Powerbook G4 I use for daily tasks and another one I use for ad design, etc.

I have a Mac IIci I use when I need to use QuarkXPress 3.x. My son has a G4 Powerbook (games/web), my wife has a G4 Powerbook (web/email) and my daughter uses an iBook G3 (she's three) for games.

I don't do video editing or anything using much Flash so all these Macs are still pretty capable.

 

[skinniezinho]

I guess it all depends on your needs and on what you have tried...
Three years ago I had a 800MHz G3 maxed out ibook (640Mb ram,60Gb hdd,good battery) I though the thing was ok,because my main computer was a Hp with Vista on it!
For example, trying my macbook if I go to a 400MHz G4 it would be almost untolerable using something "recent" like 10.4 or 10.5 at least for me.
Now, a 1GHz+ machine with appropriate software and/or some extras is usable for normal tasks (email,IM,surfing some pages,iphoto,etc).
I guess that here is line for usabillity on g3/4:
+recent software = +upgrades or - speed
- recent software = - upgrades or + speed

Only with this you can go right I guess..