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- Thread starter Ih8reno
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They are still fairly relevant for light usage. You can use old photoshop versions on it (which are still backwards compatible for the most part). Web browsing should be easy enough.
If you want more updated software you can opt for Linux.
By no means is it a power house (even in PPC standards) but it will still run most software from that era.
The difference between a the slowest 700MHz eMac and a late model 1.42GHz eMac is pretty huge. The later USB 2.0 models really make pretty decent computers. Once you get under 1GHz, its kind of pushing the limits of usability with Leopard and internet usage. Figure out which one you're getting, and then it'll be easier to figure out what you can do with it.
Assuming the 60GB hard drive is the original, it's probably an 800MHz or 1.0GHz model. Those are kind of pushing it on usability (no USB 2 and lower clock speed), but I believe they can boot OS 9, if you are into that kind of thing.
You can use that old eMac for lots of things. I personally use my Power Mac G4 for GarageBand and Internet use. I also have a few games as well, like Shrek 2 (It sucks compared to the PS2 version though), SimCity 4 (Doesn't perform the greatest) and Minecraft, which runs with a certain beta version of Java.
My Power Mac is also one of 4 computers I have with my entire music library. I keep it hooked up to my surroundsound system so I can blast music all day long.
Internet also works pretty well too. YouTube is alright, just use Camino instead of Safari because Camino can disable Flash and you can click flash objects and they'll play, so it's faster plus it can disable Internet advertising. You also can't watch YouTube in anything higher than 360p, I find.
My Power Mac is a dual 1.25GHz with 2GB of RAM and OS X 10.4.11.
My Power Mac is also one of 4 computers I have with my entire music library. I keep it hooked up to my surroundsound system so I can blast music all day long.
Internet also works pretty well too. YouTube is alright, just use Camino instead of Safari because Camino can disable Flash and you can click flash objects and they'll play, so it's faster plus it can disable Internet advertising. You also can't watch YouTube in anything higher than 360p, I find.
My Power Mac is a dual 1.25GHz with 2GB of RAM and OS X 10.4.11.
The problem is the super loud fan in them. My first mac was a 1GHz eMac, and it was loud. I have it the box for sentimental purposes, otherwise it is kind of useless. Not fast enough to be a server or anything, maybe a nice fish tank?
If you reinstall the original OS that it shipped with it would be fine for basic web browsing and email. Most speed issues are not the computer getting old, but the software getting more processor intensive.
Solution: Crank the volume up
In all seriousness though, although the fan isn't silent, it doesn't get in the way of the music at all in my opinion.
I would keep it on 10.4 at the latest,10.5 is a good OS, but I think it would be quite a bit slower on that machine and not be new enough to make a whole lot of difference in usability with modern programs. Maxing the ram can't hurt though.
They are pretty great little machines. I always found XMBC to be too cumbersome anyway; my eMac has never had problems with iTunes 9 and VLC, though.