Should I just make the jump from PPC to Intel?

[FF_productions]

It all depends on your needs.

Some people are still running G4's with OS 9 because it's still making them $ and it's been rock hard stable for them ever since.

Apple is not knocking on your door saying "UPGRADE YOUR ****ING SYSTEM".

It's your choice.

The reason I'd let that Dual 2.7 G5 go is because of the liquid cooling system inside, which means it could either die now or die down the road. That's a lost investment.

Any Mac Pro would do a great job, you could even buy a refurbished Quad 2.66 Mac Pro for $2k from Apple, or for $400 more I think you could get an Octo-Core, a hell of an improvement.

I don't upgrade till I want to upgrade, heck, I just downgraded to Tiger a few days ago on my Mac Pro and installed FCS 2, it's rock solid. Nobody is gonna force you to upgrade, find what works for you.

So, in conclusion, to be safe, I would lose that G5 because it is not a trustworthy system from the many threads and discussions I've heard of it, liquid cooled G5s should be avoided like the plague.

Good Luck with your decision.

 

[Lord Zedd]

I agree, the liquid cooling system is really the only flaw to the 2.5+GHz G5s.

I also agree, wait until Nehalem to upgrade. Being 40% clock-for-clock faster then Penryn means its going to be a major upgrade for the MacPro.

 

[m1stake]

They don't make any PowerPC machines anymore, and before too long they'll all be out of warranty too.

A very good point- Apple won't touch a computer that's more than 5 years old. And since the last PPC's were made in 2005, the PPC macs will be obsolete in Apple's eyes by then. They already won't touch my iMac G5

I also agree, wait until Nehalem to upgrade. Being 40% clock-for-clock faster then Penryn means its going to be a major upgrade for the MacPro.

That's what I'm doing!

Very excited about Nehalem, definitely picking up a MBP and Mac Pro to replace my gaming PC and old iMac G5 and PowerMac G4...

 

[disconap]

i think youre right about photoshop
its like MS word in that respect
theres really not THAT much that changes from release to release

it almost a status thing
if you know your way around the latest version it makes you more employable
but youre probably not making significantly better work because of it!

flash is a biggie though, like the latest version and actionscript 3, thats a big change!

also i would be very surprised if adobe cut off anyone on ppc machines just yet
from my experience the majority of people who ACTUALLY BUY their software, not copy it, are professionals and studios, many of which are running older hardware

its a big cost for a studio to change all their equipment and i dont know any yet that are running exclusively intel machines, not big ones at any rate

If it helps, I freelance a lot for the prepress industry, and we run CS2. Last job we had, I ran some pdfs on a machine that had CS3 installed (all I used was distiller). The client (a big name publishing house) returned them saying that they were worried about going to print with a CS3 generated PDF and wanted us to rerun them in CS2. This was less than three months ago. I know enough about generating plates and PDFs to know the concerns were unnecessary, but we did it anyway.

So yeah, depending on where you're working and what you're doing, the industry will likely take longer to adopt the newer technologies. If you work regularly with larger clients, I would actually check with them and see what their upgrade schedule is like, and try to adjust accordingly. As for intel vs. PPC, the only thing I will say is that we're on the third generation of Intel architecture now, so chances are value won't drop severely for G5s anytime soon. That said, as the generations move forward, there will be more Intels available for sale, so it's your call. For me, the options would be financing an intel now and making more back, or using what I have until I can't use it anymore and selling it for less but saving up and getting a newer machine than I would have and not having to pay interest. It's not a hard call in my case, but I have more freedom to choose what I do since I run my own company (for which none of my hardware is remotely obsolete yet) and freelancing graphics (which is much easier than working for someone else; I don't have to upgrade to CS3 until I start receiving CS3 .indd files and templates from the client, which hasn't happened yet; in fact, for newer editions of older books, our bread and butter, we still get CS1 files in that we then resave as CS2).

Ultimately, as with any computer decision, it's your call. If you don't want to turn over machines regularly and have a system that currently works for you, don't worry too much about it. If you need more top of the line or would rather turn over machines regularly, go for it. From the design standpoint, the only real advantage to an Intel is performance increases, which if your G5 is configured smartly, aren't that big a jump (again, referring to CS2; I can confirm that CS3 is much faster on intel macs running Leopard)...

 

[vansouza]

yes

 

[Firefly2002]

When you're done, you can give me the 2.7 G5 for free