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PowerMac G4 450 is it worth getting it?

I'm posting all over the place, trying to figure out a cheap way to hold me over until I get a unibody macbook this summer.

I saved an iMac G3 from the dumpster, and am now using it with maxed out ram (1GB). I'm a casual computer user, i.e. iTunes, MS Word, Safari. Right now, this old 600 mhz G3 is doing everything fine for me. I just wish i could watch youtube or a little bit of flash based stuff.

A local guy is selling a 1GHZ G4 iMac for $75, and a 733mhz Quicksilver for a little more than that. I'm thinking of just picking up the quicksilver for cheap (I already have a 17" monitor, keyboard, mouse) adding the ram from my iMac (PC133 512 x2) for a total of 1.25GB, and buying a Radeon 9600 off of eBay to be CoreImage supported and be able to watch youtube/flash stuff. I would have spent $140 at most on this whole setup. I've also got an 80GB 7200 HDD in this iMac that I'd port over too.

Remember, I'm just a light user. What to do?
 
CountRaven said:
G4.jpg


Dual 867MHz PowerPC G4 processors
* 256K on-chip level 2 cache and 1MB DDR SRAM level 3 cache per processor
* 133MHz system bus
* 2GB of PC2100 DDR SDRAM
* ATi Radeon 9800 VRAM : 256MB 256-bit DDR
* 200GB WD 7200rpm Ultra ATA/100 hard drive (primary)
* 250GB WD 7200rpm Ultra ATA/100 hard drive (secondary)
* Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
* Superdrive (Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-105)
* Three 800 Mbps FireWire port card
* Four USB 2.0 port card
* Two 400 Mbps FireWire ports
* Four USB 1.0 ports (includes two on keyboard)
* Apple speaker minijack, front headphone jack, audioline out minijact and audioline in minijack
* Build-in 10/100/1000 BASE-T Ethernet networking (Gigabit)
* Ready for Airport wireless networking
* Apple Pro Keyboard and Apple Pro Mouse
* Meets ENERGY STAR requirements
* Mac OS 10.4 Tiger Operating System (Freshly installed)

Well those are the specs of my brand new G4 PPC. Do you think that this machine is a good start for someone to start in the Mac world?

I have used the machine for all the basic, daily tasks so far and it is fast and very silent.
Click to expand...

No, I don't. Wait till you go looking for cool utilities that do what you need/want to do and it says "Requires 10.5.x" as 90% of them do now. More and more commercial apps are saying the same things. Unless you bought it for it's antique aesthetics or are just going to poke around in OS X it's really not worth the electrical costs to operate it. I dunno, that might be a little harsh; I guess you could watch movies, web surf, and play MP3s on it OK.

Nice Keyboard tho! :)


300D said:
Keep the iMac. Neither of those computers is worth spending $140 on.
Click to expand...

I agree. You can get this right now for <$100 (2xXeon 3.8, 2Gig RAM expandable to 12 GB, 8 Hot swap drive bays, 2 Drives, Hardware RAID, Win2.3K Server, Fully redundant PSUs, etc. etc.)

http://page15.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/t116124661#enlargeimg


.
 
No, I don't. Wait till you go looking for cool utilities that do what you need/want to do and it says "Requires 10.5.x" as 90% of them do now. More and more commercial apps are saying the same things. Unless you bought it for it's antique aesthetics or are just going to poke around in OS X it's really not worth the electrical costs to operate it. I dunno, that might be a little harsh; I guess you could watch movies, web surf, and play MP3s on it OK.
Click to expand...

It only takes a system upgrade to run Leopard Apps, with 2Gb and dual CPUs, that system isn't too bad. Watching movies, web surfing and playing Mp3s is what a lot of people do. I'm actually installing a new dual CPU module in my current setup just to get more life out of it.

I mirrored my existing Tiger installation on another drive, removed classic and installed Leopard over it with LeopardAssist for testing purposes and once I (hopefully) solve Leopard's appalling wi-fi drop outs and upgrade Pro Tools LE + all my plug-ins for Leopard, I'm probably not going to be booting into Tiger again, not to mention for what I use my mac for, I'm going to be getting almost 90% gain in CPU power by using threaded apps. I couldn't care less if it's a dog for running adobe software or anything like that, as long it plays music, video and can run my audio apps to some degree, it will tie me over till I get a mac pro.
 
Tesselator said:
No, I don't. Wait till you go looking for cool utilities that do what you need/want to do and it says "Requires 10.5.x" as 90% of them do now. More and more commercial apps are saying the same things. Unless you bought it for it's antique aesthetics or are just going to poke around in OS X it's really not worth the electrical costs to operate it. I dunno, that might be a little harsh; I guess you could watch movies, web surf, and play MP3s on it OK.
Click to expand...

Why do you say that? It's a dual 867MHz G4 MDD which can run 10.5.6 easily. In fact, it's twice the minimum spec for 10.5.x.

As for playing movies, I use my MDD (with GeForce Ti 4600) for EyeTV and it handles the HD channels at full resolution smoothly and easily, so that's more than OK if you ask me, especially for a machine that's seven years old and goes for cents on the dollar now on ebay (I remember mine cost more at the time than a new octo Mac Pro does now).

Edit. I see, you may be referring to the installed 10.4, but that's no reflection on the machine itself.
 
barkmonster said:
It only takes a system upgrade to run Leopard Apps,
Click to expand...

I thought Apple said 10.5 will not run or install on a G4.

EDIT: Hmm, I guess you're right. My bad. :D

General requirements
  • Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor

    specs_systemreqs20071009.png

  • 512MB of memory
  • DVD drive for installation
  • 9GB of available disk space
  • Some features require a compatible Internet service provider; fees may apply.
  • Some features require Apple's MobileMe service; fees apply.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs/
​

with 2Gb and dual CPUs, that system isn't too bad.
Click to expand...

You're kidding right?



Watching movies, web surfing and playing Mp3s is what a lot of people do. I'm actually installing a new dual CPU module in my current setup just to get more life out of it.

I mirrored my existing Tiger installation on another drive, removed classic and installed Leopard over it with LeopardAssist for testing purposes and once I (hopefully) solve Leopard's appalling wi-fi drop outs and upgrade Pro Tools LE + all my plug-ins for Leopard, I'm probably not going to be booting into Tiger again, not to mention for what I use my mac for, I'm going to be getting almost 90% gain in CPU power by using threaded apps. I couldn't care less if it's a dog for running adobe software or anything like that, as long it plays music, video and can run my audio apps to some degree, it will tie me over till I get a mac pro.
Click to expand...

Pro Tools Website said:
Pro Tools 8.0 — Mac OS X 10.5.5 or 10.5.6 Required
Pro Tools 8.0 software requires Mac OS X 10.5.5 or 10.5.6, and is not compatible with earlier versions of Leopard. If you have an earlier version of Leopard, you will need to update your Mac OS using either of the following Combo Updates before installing Pro Tools 8.0
Click to expand...

So good luck with that.
 
Tesselator said:
I thought Apple said 10.5 will not run or install on a G4.

EDIT: Hmm, I guess you're right. My bad. :D

General requirements
  • Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor

    specs_systemreqs20071009.png

  • 512MB of memory
  • DVD drive for installation
  • 9GB of available disk space
  • Some features require a compatible Internet service provider; fees may apply.
  • Some features require Apple's MobileMe service; fees apply.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs/
​



You're kidding right?

Originally Posted by Pro Tools Website
Pro Tools 8.0 — Mac OS X 10.5.5 or 10.5.6 Required
Pro Tools 8.0 software requires Mac OS X 10.5.5 or 10.5.6, and is not compatible with earlier versions of Leopard. If you have an earlier version of Leopard, you will need to update your Mac OS using either of the following Combo Updates before installing Pro Tools 8.0

So good luck with that.
Click to expand...

I have the Mbox2 Factory running Pro Tools LE 7.4.2 under Leopard 10.5.6 with a little help from

http://mac.profusehost.net/leopardassist/

Here's a screen shot to prove it!

Try and engage your brain before you try sarcasm next time :p

(Or course there's a ton of things I need to do first, properly migrate my iTunes library, finish the spotlight indexing, obtain updates so 7.4.2 doesn't bug me about rewire etc... and most importantly, add another 512Mb of RAM and buy the 8.0 upgrade, or the Mbox 2 Micro with it included. My Leopard install is a work in progress at present and I'm using Tiger on my main partition for now)
 

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