1) NewerTech's own marketing material touts that their drop-in G4 replacements only brings the performance of those machines up to the level of a 2006 Intel iMac. They are touting the ability to make your eight or nine year old hardware to perform like five year old hardware. It also states that those processors are "sold out" and if you google around, those processors haven't been available through them for over two years.
You need to look at the OWC site macsales.com so see the ones they have for sale. OWC owns NewerTech and does not update that specific site. I just bought a single 1.8GHz 7448 in late 2009. They have 3 options currently with single 1.6GHz 7447a, dual 1.6GHz 7447a and dual 1.8GHz 7448. Here is a direct URL:
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/MaxPower+G4
At the end of the day, you have an aging machine that is still fine for basic tasks as long as it is capable of running, but it will increasingly struggle to handle modern web content and it is no longer worth investing substantial sums of money into.
I'm not a GHz chaser. I love this older PowerPC hardware because of both how well it operates and it's longevity. I use it for everything I do and never feel like I don't have enough power. Keep in mind that I have invested 1000+ into this tower along with buying 2 spare Sawtooth G4's to have spare parts in the future. I would much rather have spent that 1000+ on making my G4 last as far into the future as possible than some crappy generic hardware.
2) In my opinion, using a Mac is all about the Mac experience and to me that means running Mac OS. Resorting to running a fringe platform like Morph OS unless you specifically want to play with an Amiga-like OS or resorting to buggy hacked together builds of Ubuntu on aging mac hardware seems like a pointless exercise. If you want to run Ubuntu, officially supported builds will run far better on dirt cheap, generic PC hardware and you will have a far wider selection of software packages to choose from.
That is where we clearly disagree most. I don't want generic boxes with even more generic parts in them. Myself and a few other geeks out there appreciate how PowerPC hardware functions and was made. I like to feel I am running the hardware I feel is best rather than what I have to use by default because the industry tells me I have to. I will take RISC over CISC for as long as I possibly can.
Motorola/Freescale has certainly not lost interest in making PowerPC/RISC CPU's as they currently make at least 5-6 different chips for that architecture. These chips are used mostly for industrial use. The G4 7448 is still made and has other markets besides G4 upgrades. The e600 core it uses is quite advanced. Also, as I mentioned already the 7448 could have easily solved the PowerBook G4 performance woes.
IBM are a much better PowerPC maker now than ever. The 3 big game consoles (PS3, xbox, wii) all have IBM PowerPC chips.
The high end core and power chips they make for the research and super computing markets exceed the performance of anything intel makes. PowerPC/RISC is still the high end of the market like always pretty much. There was just a downslide in the tech in the early to mid 2000's that has now recovered and then some. The only trouble for me and other RISC fanatics like myself is that Apple abandoned the architecture while it was having that weak stint. I really wish they had of stuck with it.
All I can do now is amerce myself in PowerPC goodness till my stockpile of hardware is gone. Thanks to how well it's made and having all my spare hardware.. that will be decades.
IBM completely blew up Apple's product timeline and forced Apple to push multiprocessor configurations before the computer industry was really ready for it, frankly before complier technology was there to support it, and forced them to develop OEM liquid cooling systems. The bottom line is that when a business partner, in this case a hardware supplier fails you that badly, to the point that it forces you make design changes that compromise the reliability of your products and undermines the competitiveness of your entire product line, it is really difficult to blame Apple for ditching IBM.
I forgot to comment on this..
It was Motorola that brought multiprocessors to Apple first. Not IBM. The G4 chips were pretty much all Moto. just as the G5 was all IBM. After the G3 the 3 companies pretty much stopped developing chips together where as before that every single chip was worked on by all 3.
The dual 604e 8600/9600 in 1997 and then dual G4 450 and 500 in fall 2000 were officially Motorola chips. As already mentioned all G4 chips are Motorola/Freescale.
The first multiprocessor Mac with IBM CPU's was the G5 tower.
A short history on who made what since the 603 PowerPC:
603,603e,603ev - Mostly IBM
604,604e - Mostly Moto.
G3 - Both but predominantly IBM
(above 3 were all co-engineered by all 3 companies to some level)
G4 - Motorola/Freescale only
G5 - IBM only