Time to Get New Macs

[wjalex4]

It's time for my Dad and I to get new Macs. We are running ancient PowerComputing 200MHz and 6400/200 machines, on MacOS 9.1.

Is now a good time to buy? I want to spend something in the neighborhood of $1200 each for the new machines. I saw that OSX 10.3 will begin shipping October 24th... I want to make sure that I get that OS with whatever I buy. I bought a Performa 6220CD years ago and felt like I got really hosed... I soon felt like I had a slow machine.

We are average users... MS Office, AppleWorks, Internet browsing, kids (ages 6 and 8) like to play games like CroMag Rally (they played on my work G3 iBook).

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

i would look at the high end emac and wait until panther is out so you get it with your machine, make sure whatever you do you get at least 1 gig or better. one more comment emacs are due for an update so you may want to wait until the base machine is the 1 gig & then go for it that way you get a good cpu,panther and whatever else they throw in. emac should have been called vmac for value! good luck

 

[wjalex4]

The eMac is one machine I looked at, but I was concerned about USB 1.0. With a PowerMac G4, I get PCI slots, so even with the USB 1.0 built-in, I could always add a USB 2.0 PCI card. Maybe USB 1.0 isn't a big deal... I just don't want to wind up not being able use lots of devices because I don't have USB 2.0.

I have not ruled out the eMac, but I am disappointed that Apple is *still* making machines with USB 1.0. Thank you for your input... I appreciate it.

 

[solvs]

You can still find some G4 Towers for sale for around your price range. Apple sells a 1.25 starting @ about $1299, less if you qualify for Gov or Edu discounts. You could always buy a refurb Tower for around that as well.

Be nice if Apple had a cheaper Tower, maybe someday.