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Power Book G4 Still Worth While?

S

SirWilliam

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 5, 2008
29
0
Hi All,

This is my first post to the forum. I have never owned a Mac before but my company is about to get rid of a couple old Powerbook G4s...not entirely sure of the specs...I know they have a freshly formatted 160gb HDDs with OSX something or other and 2gb of RAM...anyway I can get one for next to nothing if I want it.

I have always wanted to own a Mac but have never been able to justify the price until possibly now...

Could an old G4 Powerbook be used as an everyday computer and do they still make software to support these old machines?

Thanks in advance for any responses.
 
Depends what models they are getting rid of. you want to be as close to the latest models as possible. All powerbooks perform better with Tiger than they do with Leopard. by that i mean that Tiger runs better on older hardware. as far as apps go, most of the apps are universal, meaning they run on PowerPC and Intel so you should be fine.

If you want to use it for email, browsing they will be fine. anything more demanding and its going to be tough but doable.
 
Yes, grab one and sell me the other.

With two gigs of ram and a bigger hard drive, they were doing the right thing by the old Powerbooks.

Get it if it's cheap. The maxed ram will make it great for Leopard.
 
Buy it. Macs give you a incredible amount of longevity. They will have to be prying my 12" aluminum powerbook out of my cold ,dead hands!

For that matter I still have a 8! year old lime green iBook that comfortably runs Tiger with 512mb of Ram.
You probably won't hit the wall for a few years unless you are obsessed with the fashion of being the first-est with the newest.
 
I'd be all over it/them!
I reckon Leopard seems snappier on mine than Tiger did, but I upped the HD at around the same time. With that much RAM, you'll be fine.
DO IT!
 
You could always buy them and resell them. Use that money to buy an intel-based Mac. Those are more future-proof.
 
Wow. Absolutely, yes. I mean, assuming it's not the original 450 or 500 MHz models, in which case no, they really wouldn't be great all-around machines. Anything 800 MHz or later I'd say, though (especially 1.25 GHz or better) would make an absolutely fine, fun email, web, word processing machine. You could do some photoshopping as well, as long as you're not intending to do any heavy editing, of course.

As for everyone saying they want you to send them one, ignore them.

Send one to me instead :D

(After all, I don't even have a Mac laptop)
 
NC MacGuy said:
If they are 12" models you are a lucky man. Get them regardless. I miss my 12" PB sooo much. The Air is nice but it still pales in comparison.
Click to expand...

So true, I just bought a used 12 inch for internet and MS office on the road. It is fast (10.4.11) and very stable with 1.25GB Ram and 120GB HD. No HD (very jerky) capability but that's ok.

Cheers,
 
Sadly they are not the 12" models...they are the 15.4" models...and I do not think they could be more than 3 or 4 years old...I know I do not have all of the specs yet but what do you think they could be worth? I am guessing between $400-$600...
 
SirWilliam said:
Sadly they are not the 12" models...they are the 15.4" models...and I do not think they could be more than 3 or 4 years old...I know I do not have all of the specs yet but what do you think they could be worth? I am guessing between $400-$600...
Click to expand...

If they're later models, they could be worth more like between $600-800, actually..... and possibly as much as $1000 (though that would be high).
 
NC MacGuy said:
If they are 12" models you are a lucky man. Get them regardless. I miss my 12" PB sooo much. The Air is nice but it still pales in comparison.
Click to expand...

Agreed :D
 

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Check the specs in the battery compartment and remember I HAD FIRST DIBS on one, too.

THANKS and let us know what you've got.
 
Okay so I have more specs...and apparently the first specs I gave you guys were wrong... So they have a 1.67ghz G4 processor, 80GB HHD, 1GB SDRAM, 64MB ATI Graphics card, DVD-R...there are some problems with two of the three so I have an appointment with Apple tomorrow to hopefully get them fixed assuming it does not cost a fortune. We are going to be putting the computers for sale on Craigslist in the Seattle region hopefully by Friday and they will all have a clean install of OSX Tiger...I am guessing based on what I saw on eBay that they will be around $550-$650.
 
SirWilliam said:
Okay so I have more specs...and apparently the first specs I gave you guys were wrong... So they have a 1.67ghz G4 processor, 80GB HHD, 1GB SDRAM, 64MB ATI Graphics card, DVD-R...there are some problems with two of the three so I have an appointment with Apple tomorrow to hopefully get them fixed assuming it does not cost a fortune. We are going to be putting the computers for sale on Craigslist in the Seattle region hopefully by Friday and they will all have a clean install of OSX Tiger...I am guessing based on what I saw on eBay that they will be around $550-$650.
Click to expand...

I would have bought them but since you told me there are a butt load of problems....

make sure you post a link though, i'd like to see.
 
SirWilliam said:
Okay so I have more specs...and apparently the first specs I gave you guys were wrong... So they have a 1.67ghz G4 processor, 80GB HHD, 1GB SDRAM, 64MB ATI Graphics card, DVD-R...there are some problems with two of the three so I have an appointment with Apple tomorrow to hopefully get them fixed assuming it does not cost a fortune. We are going to be putting the computers for sale on Craigslist in the Seattle region hopefully by Friday and they will all have a clean install of OSX Tiger...I am guessing based on what I saw on eBay that they will be around $550-$650.
Click to expand...

I know it's still $400, but for about $400 you can get a brand new MacBook with a dual-core processor and way more juice in it. I don't think the $1099 model has a DVD-RW, but that's about the only thing you would miss out on. There is a rumored price cut on the lowball model coming soon, but I can highly recommend going with the Intel processors due to how much ridiculously faster everything runs.

But if that $400 is a huge deal, the PowerBook should be OK. Those specs sound a lot like the Mini I had, and it was quite decent.
 
SirWilliam said:
Okay so I have more specs...and apparently the first specs I gave you guys were wrong... So they have a 1.67ghz G4 processor, 80GB HHD, 1GB SDRAM, 64MB ATI Graphics card, DVD-R...there are some problems with two of the three so I have an appointment with Apple tomorrow to hopefully get them fixed assuming it does not cost a fortune. We are going to be putting the computers for sale on Craigslist in the Seattle region hopefully by Friday and they will all have a clean install of OSX Tiger...I am guessing based on what I saw on eBay that they will be around $550-$650.
Click to expand...

Just a heads up is the ones are ebay are mostly either in excellent condition and/or maxed out on specs to sell that well.
 
Eddyisgreat said:
I would have bought them but since you told me there are a butt load of problems....

make sure you post a link though, i'd like to see.
Click to expand...

Well the one that works is in excellent condition...and I am pretty sure the other two are going to be sold as parts because I am sure Apple will charge a fortune for anything that needs to be replaced.

alphaod said:
Just a heads up is the ones are ebay are mostly either in excellent condition and/or maxed out on specs to sell that well.
Click to expand...

Well the ones that I saw that had sold for $675 and $690 had the exact same specs as the ones I have so I figure $600 on craigslist is probably a fair price.
 
None of them have the 128 vram?

If any of them have lcd problems, let me know, I'd be interested in a headless PB.
 
if apple gives you an estimate but charges too much to fix - then you might want to check out ifixit.com. if i remember the 15" PBs are easier to get into then the 12-inchers. but of course, fixing it yourself may not be lucrative for you in the long run.
 
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