Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

My first Mac-duallie vs superdrive and other assorted questions.

fraeone

fraeone

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 26, 2003
219
9
Seattle, WA
I'm close to making the plunge on my first Mac(!). I have been eyeing them closely since SJ came back, but OS X, (specifically panther with expose and xcode) finally have me sold. Right now I'm stuck between getting the Power Mac single G4 1.25 w/ a superdrive or the dual 1.25 w/ a combo (approx $85 more). I would love to have the Superdrive, but am I going to be really sorry later if I don't get a dual? I imagine the heaviest thing I will be doing is photoshop with 100MB files.

I already have a pc with a Toshiba sdr5002 dvd-r and if it's relatively easy to burn a mac dvd image on a PC maybe I can justify the dual. But ideally I would like to be able to survive completely without my PC, so having a Superdrive is probably worth more than a few seconds saved in PS. I would wait another month to save up enough money for the dual-super, but I'm afraid the G4s will be gone by then. Local resellers have already told me they don't have any.

If I'm completely misguided and should be getting a G5, please let me know. My main problem with the aluminum monster is that I won't be able to afford one until next year--and I'm dying to dig into this copy of "Learning Cocoa with Objective-C".

Thanks for reading, any wisdom is greatly appreciated.

fraeone
 
Buy the dual with the combo. When you can afford it, buy a nice DVD-R at someplace like www.newegg.com for a couple of hundred bucks. Go to www.xlr8yourmac.com to see others experiances with the drive you want to buy. The only problem is that you may have to buy iLife ($50) or DVD Studio Pro separately because the combo model may not come with iDVD.

And I recommend Apple Care, just in case. It's cheaper at www.macsolutions.com and you can buy it anytime within the first year's standard warranty. Not really neccessary, but after 90 days you don't get any more free phone support.

Take a look at the refurbs, too. Apple Online Store, Special Deals. Enjoy!

As for the G5, you can go cheap for now and get a single G4 or refurb, or just save up for the next rev. It will be much faster.
 
I too would get the dual... I don't think that iDVD will work with a third party drive. If you are a student, you can get DVD studio pro for around 250-300, which is a damn good price.
 
iDVD won't work on 3rd part drives, although there are some dodgy hacks around that claim to be able to make it happen.

Get DVD studio pro and Toast, build VIDEO_TS folders and burn the discs from toast on the external DVD. Educational versions of DVDSP are a steal and it's a much better app than iDVD.
 
Actually, my 1.25 G4 combo came with iDVD. There is a company that advertises their DVD drive (internal) that works with iDVD. You can fit that into your second CD bay.
Definitely get the dual. A lot more future proof. It's a nice machine.




Edit: It's TAXAN (I'm in Japan, but I think they're worldwide) and they built it specifically for the G4.
Specs:
Write:
DVD-R x4/DVD-RW x2/CD-R x16/CD-RW x8
Read:
DVD-ROM x12/CD-ROM x32


Works with iLife and Disc Burner.
Product name I think is: DVRMQ4

Costs just over $200 US in Japan.


Hope that's useful.
 
Thanks for all the good advice everyone. After perusing xlr8yourmac I see that with some work it looks as if I will be able to pull the Toshiba DVD-R out of my PC and put it in the Mac. iDVD is not that important to me, I use the dvd-r for backing up data mostly.

Final question: many times I have heard the phrase "OS X loves duallies." Does that mean the basic performance of the OS will be noticeably improved with a dual? If I load two single-threaded apps, will they each get assigned to different processors? Or is that 2nd cpu only useful with apps that are "dual-aware" such as Photoshop or Final Cut.

Thanks again,

fraeone
 
I agree with everyone here. If I wasn't going to get the G5, I would defintely get the dualie, but I want to point out another point of view. There are several dual processor upgrades out now and you can get a dual processor G4 running at 1.25 ghz for about $750, probably less if you really looked.

Just another option:)
 
Wow that is really cheap. So it would involve buying an older G4 and then buying an upgrade to it?

fraeone
 
yeah, you can pretty much upgrade any of the G4 PowerMacs. I am toying with the idea of a dual 1ghz upgrade for mine, though it would be out of vanity more than anythng. I can't afford a new G5 right now and my ego needs massaging:D
 
the software you use has to be built for dual processor technology. you will not see an increase in speed with photoshop with a dual 1G or a single 1G. your focus for speed should be aquired with more RAM. Load the thing with RAM get DVD Studio Pro and an firewire burner and save yourself some money.
 
Originally posted by advres
Look - ive never had a dream in my life because a dream is what you want to do but still havent persued - i knew what i wanted and did it till it was done so ive been the dream that i wanted to be since day one
Click to expand...

awesome, another hip hop fan on here!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back