'OldSkool' iMac G4 purchase

[carlosbutler]

After owning two apple computers within 4 months (brand new 3.06ghz iMac in September and thirdhand Black MacBook 1,1) the thought of purchasing an aluminium MacBook was quite intriguing especially since i have become very accustomed to macs now and even though at home there are 3 windows machines, its as if im stepping back 10 years into an old computer with the 'basicness' of windows XP. It had occured to me because of living in two different places (university-home and home-home), and thought there must be some good deals going on old iMacs, so i can leave one at home.

Looking around there seems to be a few on eBay for about £180, iMac G4 with Tiger, 800MHz CPU and either 512/768mb ram with 80gb hard drive. I was wondering if this was a good deal, and also if it was worth installing Leopard. I wasnt sure if Leopard would run properly, or if it would run as if you had installed Vista on a laptop that is more than half a year old (ie dead slow). also is it worth it to spend £200ish on it, i have just got my student loan but since i dont need it for anything, and my plans of investing in a high interest account have gone out the window because of this 'crisis' i thought id spalsh out on a toy...

 

[zombie1210]

There is something very cool about those.

 

[eRondeau]

The 20" models are the ones to get, if you can find them. Otherwise go for the 17"; the 15" models are still cool but rather pedestrian.

Personally I'd love on of those too. I can still remember reading the Time Magazine story debuting them, well before I knew anything about Mac's. I remember thinking "That Steve Jobs is really onto something there..."

 

[psipsina]

I have a 17 inch and people still comment on it when they see it! Not bad for a 6 year old computer. Its too slow to be our workhorse computer but its a great computer to do basic stuff on and its soooo reliable.

 

[carlosbutler]

is there a big difference between the 17" and 20" in terms of screen resolution and size of the base? i cant seem to find many specs on the internet about these

 

[themoonisdown09]

I've always loved the iMac G4. I'd definitely get one if I were you.

 

[Jaunty]

iMac G4

My first computer was an iMac G4 1Ghz 17". I recently upgraded it at approx cost as follows

2 x 1Gb sticks RAM £50
500Gb Hitachi SATA Drive £50
New Pioneer 16 x Superdrive £17
New PRAM battery £1.50
Airport Card £17.50

I paid a Mac specialist £100 to install it all for me, and have stuck Leopard on it. I have all my music stored in Apple Lossless format on it. It now lives in the kitchen and serves up iTunes, LastFm, RadioTime and iPlayer radio to various Airport Expresses with Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil (I use Airfoil for iTunes streaming as well, as I find it more reliable). I have bought a 2nd hand iPod Touch for £120 mainly to use as a remote control for iTunes.

It is also great for recipes and surfing the web, and with the Apple Pro speakers I have music in the kitchen too. And best of all it looks so damn cool, especially with the new slim Apple wireless bluetooth keyboard which hides away neatly underneath in a drawer.

A drawback is that because it is USB1.1 it is not really practical to sync iPods on it. So I will duplicate the lossless library on a Macbook as back up and also have an AAC copy on the Macbook for iPod sync when I want to carry more music.

As I had the iMac G4 it was an easy decision to decide to upgrade. Whether i would have bought one in preference to say a G5 which you can also get cheaply I don't really know.

Cheers