Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

So... 1.25ghz G4 eMac... usable?

MacHamster68 said:
ok i always think about our uk prices for used macs and $130 are just over £80
and thats a bargain price not to be missed for the uk
ok i know we in europe pay nearly double for what you guys in the us get the used macs :eek: if i see the prices on ebay .com , i get tears in my eyes and want to immigrate immediately :(
Click to expand...

I know how you feel. Prices in the US are way cheaper than here in Canada.
 
sikkinixx said:
I know how you feel. Prices in the US are way cheaper than here in Canada.
Click to expand...

You're in Canada getting a price like that?! Where do you live! Im in Toronto and I hardly ever find good deals like that! I notice that Toronto is more expensive than other areas though.
 
G4 eMac 1.25ghz

It's probably too little too late, but I'll chime in. I got my first Mac (to get my Mac feet wet). I stumbled on a great deal on a G4 eMac 1.25 running 10.5.8 and while it's not quite the power and speed I'm used to on my dual core PC's, I (even being a power user) and damn impressed at how snappy it is for the 'basics' and it was a great way to get learning about Macs and OS X. I got it with 512mb and found another stick of (matching!) DDR-PC2700 off craigslist for a measly $10 so running 1gb RAM which I highly recommend. I can tell ya, I'm really loving the Mac world and will be getting a G5 when I can afford it only because the G4 exposed me to a whole new world that I'm really, really enjoying.
 
Well it's a bit of apples (no pun intended) and oranges, but my son is using my old 1.33 Ghz iBook with 1 GB of ram and it still works great. I think that we are still running Tiger on there. It works great for his web surfing and for Microsoft Office. I wouldn't do any video rendering or anything, but it's a great machine for the basics.

If the price was right, I'd buy another!
 
The only problem I have with my eMac is with flash video. Kinda choppy. It is a little slower than something brand new, but compared to a new netbook it is just as fast in response and program opening. But I have been paying more like $35 for the eMacs on Craigslist for my school.
 
prss14 said:
The only problem I have with my eMac is with flash video. Kinda choppy. It is a little slower than something brand new, but compared to a new netbook it is just as fast in response and program opening. But I have been paying more like $35 for the eMacs on Craigslist for my school.
Click to expand...

Even the simplest Flash can bring a 100GHz 16-core Mac Pro to its knees (or at least it WILL when that machine comes out in about 2025!) That's just what Flash does, and it's one of several reasons why Apple and Adobe aren't exactly best of friends anymore. Having said that -- you'll find an earlier version of Flash Player is much more PowerPC G4 friendly. Can't remember what it is off-hand but search the forums and you'll be pointed in the right direction.
 
the problem is with flashplayer 9 that the amount of websites that do not support the old flashpayer 9 is increasing every day , which means in a year or two its pointless to go online any more because then you need flashplayer 10 as minimum and you will need windows as its the only operating system that gets all the support from adobe , even linux seems to get more support from adobe then osx, as i never had problems of any kind using linux and flash
ok my eMac 1.42 and mini 1.42 still open sites with flashplayer 10 , but regular the cpu usage goes up to 100%on the mini , the eMac handles it a bit better , might be because the emac has the better graphics card and more vram
 
jemeinc said:
Believe it or not, I use that very same machine every single day for my business. It works fine with Leopard. I also have an iMac & a MacBook that we use at home and obviously these are MUCH faster than the eMac. But for running quickbooks, MS office, iTunes, emailing, web surfing, etc etc it's a very capable machine. It's also the only mac I've EVER owned that didn't require a logicboard replacement or 3. It's a tank.

I can't see any reason to replace it anytime soon either. For my needs it's a workhorse that I've been very pleased with.
Click to expand...

I guess I missed something here. Apples system requirements say Leopard (10.5) requires an INTEL processor. Does it work on a g4 despite that? Do you have to use a special patch?
 
robeddie said:
I guess I missed something here. Apples system requirements say Leopard (10.5) requires an INTEL processor. Does it work on a g4 despite that? Do you have to use a special patch?
Click to expand...
Leopard supports both PowerPC- and Intel x86-based Macintosh computers; support for the G3 processor was dropped and the G4 processor required a minimum clock rate of 867 MHz, and at least 512 MB of RAM to be installed.but there are hacks to get it running with less mhz

its snow leopard that requieres a intel processor and only snow leopard ,
leopard , tiger ,panther , jaguar , puma ,cheetah all work on ppc Mac's

so with the introduction of snow leopard apple slammed the door in the face of ppc Mac users
and you only get still updates for tiger and leopard because they discovered that they sold some intel macs in the past with these operating systems
 
macgeek18 said:
I'd get it,I had a 1Ghz eMac for awhile with 1GB of ram and it ram youtube and many other heavy flash sites really well.It would be a good first Mac,or upgrade from pc.
Click to expand...

I've tried youtube/hulu on the same machine (cept 1.5gb ram) with both tiger and leopard and it was extremely choppy. You must be delusional
 
TheMythTheMan said:
I've tried youtube/hulu on the same machine (cept 1.5gb ram) with both tiger and leopard and it was extremely choppy. You must be delusional
Click to expand...

One of my 2 spare Sawtooth towers is a G4 1.0GHz and it plays youtube videos just fine. Maybe you're the delusional one.
 
Upgrading G4 EMac. Over-clocking, RAM, HDD

So, what sort of places or sites would you recommend for upgrading parts?


I just bought a 1.25GHz eMac as I always liked these older plastic ones (currently I have 2 unibody MBPs and an Air, so I'm getting bored with aluminium).

Mine has 768 MB RAM and Panther on it.

I am planning to replace the HDD with a 7200rpm one and the RAM will be upgraded to 1GB (can I increase that limit?). I have some old DDR2 RAM units (white MB, late-2006, C2D), would they be any good?

I am thinking about overclocking, which might be fun with these eMacs. They are so solid, that I don't expect any problems. I am planning to use the computer by the pool house. My C2D alu ones are so annoying outside. The Air is the only one that I can use outdoors. I think the eMac will be great for videos and basic web browsing.

I might even attempt to edit some MiniDV on it. While the new ones overheat under medium workload, I will be having fun with my old fun-machine. Giggity! (no porn, though!)

One more thing... I cannot wait to get back to Tiger. I just love that OS.
 
you can run osx leopard on the eMac 1.42
you can increase to 2gb ram but only PC2700 ddr ram (no ddr2)
has to be PC2700 or ddr 333 cl 2.5 but ddr 400 cl3 works too
but has to be for Mac
and another thing the eMac has a mini vga port on the side where all the ports are , if you get a mini vga to vga adapter you can even connect a second monitor ,
ok natively mirror only , but you can download "screen spanning doctor" and run the script and enjoy a desktop over 2 monitors , because apple has only blocked this feature in open firmware to protect the sales of more expensive Macs
 
MacHamster68 said:
you can run osx leopard on the eMac 1.42
you can increase to 2gb ram but only PC2700 ddr ram (no ddr2)
has to be PC2700 or ddr 333 cl 2.5 but ddr 400 cl3 works too
but has to be for Mac
and another thing the eMac has a mini vga port on the side where all the ports are , if you get a mini vga to vga adapter you can even connect a second monitor ,
ok natively mirror only , but you can download "screen spanning doctor" and run the script and enjoy a desktop over 2 monitors , because apple has only blocked this feature in open firmware to protect the sales of more expensive Macs
Click to expand...


Thanks for your post (even if it was not meant to be for me :) ).

Can anybody recommend a HDD for these eMacs, please? I have a few standard 2.5" ones that came with recent Macs. One is 160GB, the 120GB limit doesn't apply to the eMacs, only some towers, is that right?
 
the eMac is using a standard 3.5" Ultra ATA/100 hard drive without limit, but a 2.5 "would get lost inside ;)
 
eMacs are very very loud, but they are nearly indestructible. I used my 1 ghz eMac for a while but eventually sold it. I personally wouldn't buy another one simply because of the massive racket the fan creates, but in terms of performance, they are very usable. But yeah. Flash is worthless on PPC's. Flash 10 even brought my 2.0ghz iMac G5 to its knees, and Flash 9 is very fast but not compatible with a lot of sites like Hulu. So PPC's really aren't terribly viable if you're looking to surf the web a lot, but they are perfect if you are using it as a work machine--office apps, a little music, email, etc.
 
Yes, it's 3.5", IDE. Now I definitely want to turn it into a media-focused 'fourthary' ;) computer. Probably 250GB with 2GB RAM will hum along just fine.

Actually, I just realised that I might have an old G4 PowerBook in the office somewhere with loose RAM and starting-up issues. I'm really looking forward to this old-Mac game.
 
as i have 2 eMacs 1.42 ghz models and use them for media i have fitted 2 harddrives in one (sacrificing the optical drive ) now both harddrives have 750gb and in the the second eMac is a 750gb harddrive too sharing the optical drive via the network ,
and for the loudness of the fan , as i mentioned it earlier at one point
i fitted ZALMAN fanmate's which are making them nearly
as quiet as my Mac mini ,ok you can still hear the fans but only if you are close to the extractor hole at the back , sitting in front certainly as quiet as a iMac g5
 
sikkinixx said:
Out of curiosity, why use the eMac when you have better machines? I'm asking myself that since I too have much quicker machines... I think I'm a bit of a sucker for nostalgia, though that only goes to a point. I had a 400mhz G3 a few years ago and it was punishment.
Click to expand...

I have a six month old MacBook, and yet for some reason I find using my iMac more of a comfort. See my sig for the nitty gritty, but suffice it to say she rolls at about half the speed that eMac does and I can still do everything perfectly fine. Flash is a dog, but HTML5 video actually works! Safari 5 under Leopard also works, and is a tiny bit more responsive than Safari 4 was.

As long as you don't have any moving or shaking in mind :), it should make a good little secondary machine.
 
If you absolutely need Flash go with Tiger on that eMac, however, since the HTML5 YouTube beta, I see no reason to not go with Leopard unless you do lots of flash games and other flash sites. Even low quality Flash videos run at tolerable speed on Leopard though.

Other than the dock magnification effect (which I never use anyway) Leopard runs faster than Tiger on my machine.
 
PowerGamerX said:
If you absolutely need Flash go with Tiger on that eMac, however, since the HTML5 YouTube beta, I see no reason to not go with Leopard unless you do lots of flash games and other flash sites. Even low quality Flash videos run at tolerable speed on Leopard though.

Other than the dock magnification effect (which I never use anyway) Leopard runs faster than Tiger on my machine.
Click to expand...

Just as an aside, I wonder what causes the speed differences. I haven't seen a lick of difference between Tiger and Leopard on my iMac, and Leopard has more to offer, so it wasn't a difficult decision. Flash runs poorly for me in both environments.
 
drewdle said:
Just as an aside, I wonder what causes the speed differences. I haven't seen a lick of difference between Tiger and Leopard on my iMac, and Leopard has more to offer, so it wasn't a difficult decision. Flash runs poorly for me in both environments.
Click to expand...

try HTML5 beta and you will be surprised what your iMac can handle
and there is nothing you cant have in tiger too
try for example a program called "desktop manager" in my opinion even better then spaces (works in leopard too )
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back