What can this Imac G4 do?

[NOLF1]

Hi everyone!

I am sorry for how stupid this question is, but I have NEVER used a mac before. Well I mean any of the OS X macs. I used the old mac OS 7/8 macs many years ago.

I am wondering something... There is a guy at work that is offering to sell me an Imac G4 with the following specs for $100.

1.25 GHZ
2 gigs ram
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra video card
80 gig hard drive
OSX 10.5 Leopard

I am thinking about getting this just as a 2nd computer, but since it is OLD I am wondering if I can do the following with it or if it will be too slow:

1. Watch Youtube videos (very important!!!)
2. Browse the web at decent speeds
3. Do minor office work on it

Would it do all of these things at acceptable speeds? Or is it going to be too old/slow at this point?

Thank you for any info!

 

[gatepc]

it should do all that you listed just fine and dandy and have some extra speed left for basic multitasking ( thats a good deal for 100 also )

 

[arjen92]

I have one with lower specs. And it does everything fine. Altough sometimes youtube is jaggy, but I have much less ram. But I say do it. Make sure you get the speakers. And if I'm right about everything to also get it pretty cheap, cause http://www.mac2sell.net/ said the imac is worth 280$, check it yourself at http://www.mac2sell.net/

 

[NOLF1]

I have one with lower specs. And it does everything fine. Altough sometimes youtube is jaggy, but I have much less ram. But I say do it. Make sure you get the speakers. And if I'm right about everything to also get it pretty cheap, cause http://www.mac2sell.net/ said the imac is worth 280$, check it yourself at http://www.mac2sell.net/

Is the one you have with the Geforce 2 MX card?

This one has a Geforce FX card. Would that help Youtube any? Or does the video card not matter for that?

Youtube I do like crazy and run a channel on so I definitely want it to perform good.

 

[arjen92]

I can't tell you honestly how it will run youtube, but because there's 2 GB of ram I expect it should run fluently.

But how about trying it. Can't your friend take it with him, or can you visit your friend.

p.s. I just checked, it has the Geforce FX 5200

 

[mkrishnan]

This one has a Geforce FX card. Would that help Youtube any? Or does the video card not matter for that?

The Flash video on Youtube has pretty minimal GPU acceleration... the issues are that (1) the computer is old and has a slow processor, and (2) that Flash for OS X has always been slower / less efficient than Flash for Windows on given hardware.

The Flash video will probably have some chop to it, but it'll work....

You'll do better with other video like Quicktime video -- Youtube HD is going to be pretty bad, but Quicktime 480p and some 720p for instance worked pretty well on my G4....

 

[DewGuy1999]

I can't say exactly how YouTube will be on it, but using the iMac in my sig, YouTube tends to have lots of problems with audio/video sync. It can also be plagued with starting/stopping, but this can usually be negated by allowing the video to completely load and then watching it. My understanding is that it behaves in this manner because Adobe has done a poor job with Flash player on PowerPC. It tends to max out the CPU. My understanding is that it affects all PowerPC Macs in this manner. Apparently it's not a problem on MacIntels because the sheer processing power of processor can overcome the failings in Adobe's implementation. It became worse after YouTube started making upgrades adding HD. I don't watch HD YouTube videos as my internet service is low end at (up to) 768MB.

Web browsing, email, word processing, etc. are all fine.