planning on getting a g4 ibook

[Sgtarky]

I am seeing great deals on g4 ibooks, for around 100, I know I shouldnt expect much out of it, I just plan on tinkering with it for a bit and giving it to my niece. So what can really be done with these.

 

[669532]

That computer what my 1st mac (Nov 2005) and after 2 repairs it is still going, I only really use it for spotify while i'm cooking these days.

 

[Zeke D]

Why is this such a common topic? I find it silly to ask "what can I do with this?"
You can do everything a computer can do: surf the web, play architecture specific games, use software.

Anyway, the G4 iBook was my first apple laptop. It still gets daily use.

 

[Jessica Lares]

When people ask this question, it really amazes me. The computer may be old, but it's not THAT old...

OP, tell us what you CURRENTLY do on your main machine and we'll tell you if it's possible on the iBook and workarounds to it if not. I personally do basic rendering on my iMac G4, so they are more than capable.

 

[Sgtarky]

When people ask this question, it really amazes me. The computer may be old, but it's not THAT old...

OP, tell us what you CURRENTLY do on your main machine and we'll tell you if it's possible on the iBook and workarounds to it if not. I personally do basic rendering on my iMac G4, so they are more than capable.

I mainly do viritualizations, some MS office stuff, websurfing, facebook, youtube project free tv. I know it wont do vm's all that well mainly because of 1 gig of ram, ms office..well openoffice will suffice. the army does alot of digital signatures with cac cards I know I can sign into lots of their websites on a vm'd lion osx but there isnt a lotus forms for mac.

 

[DrakkenWar]

10.5 will nerf you there as well

I mainly do viritualizations, some MS office stuff, websurfing, facebook, youtube project free tv. I know it wont do vm's all that well mainly because of 1 gig of ram, ms office..well openoffice will suffice. the army does alot of digital signatures with cac cards I know I can sign into lots of their websites on a vm'd lion osx but there isnt a lotus forms for mac.

As far as CAC access? You will really have nothing but heartache with anything less than 10.6. When my wife's C2D macbook came with 10.4 on it, I was tearing my hair out to try and get her home access to the secure side of AF.MIL to get to her work email and docks from home. 10.5? Was no better, nothing I could figure out would play well, a call to applesupport was pretty much pointless. 10.6? Things got better, CAC was recognized on first boot/plug, email access was spotty, but worked for the most part. Added 2 gigs of ram, bumped her to 10.7 and things went almost as smooth as butter.
Sorry for such a long winded reply, just a wanted to relate what you are most likely to run into while trying to get CAC access, if you have a copy of XP? I would highly recommend taking the iBook to 1.5gig of ram and running that in a VM to alleviate a lot of the headache.