Is there any indisputable reason that one shouldn’t buy a used G5 iMac? Intel-Core’s are a lot more money on the used market.
I’m looking at something like this:
Hugh
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On 22 May 2009, at 14:56, hugh wrote:
Is there any indisputable reason that one shouldn’t buy a used G5
iMac? Intel-Core’s are a lot more money on the used market.
As soon as Snow Leopard comes out, I’m donating my dual G5 tower to
Annie, and getting a current 24" iMac. I’m waiting until SL comes out
so I don’t have to buy it separately. My reason is that nowadays, a
lot of software utilises the graphics card for extra performance and,
as far as I know, only the Intel processor Macs will allow this. I
think, also, that Snow Leopard will only run on Intel Macs, so that’s
a bigger reason for me to change. I’ve always regarded the OS as the
most important software I own, so keeping abreast of the latest
version is a must for me. My current G5 won’t even run the soon-to-be-
latest OS, so I’m changing, and looking forward to the iMac whacking
my old G5 tower hollow, for a bit less money than I paid for the G5
tower three or four years ago. Of what other field of human endeavour
can it be said that things keep getting better AND cheaper? I love
computers 
The Intel cored Macs have to be the way to go, in my opinion, whether
you’re an early adopter or a more circumspect upgrader. The Power PC
is long gone now. That’s not to say that you can’t do good work on a
ten-year old machine; I’ve done it, but I’d recommend really strongly
to get up to date as far as possible. I’m speaking as someone who
doesn’t have any kind of a steady job, and who has to worry about
being able to afford to put two new tyres on the car, by the way …
best wishes,
Paul Bradforth
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new tyres?..what are they?
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At least until the Next Thing comes along.
I’ll second the emotion about getting your money’s worth out of old
hardware. I just upgraded last year, replacing my G4 Powerbook 15"
1.25 with a MacBook Pro 15" dual 2.6; and my G4 dual 1.25 (MDD) tower
with an 8-core Mac Pro 2.8. The laptop was from 2003 and the tower was
from 2002, so I think I wrung every pfennig out of them that was there
for the wringing. Both are still running, keeping my daughters amused.
I never got on the G5 bandwagon at all, except for an eBay-special G5
Xserve humming away in my basement, seriously underutilized.
I’m hoping that Snow Leopard uses these new Macs to their fullest; it
appears to be the case from what I’ve seen leaked so far, and it’s
certainly been my experience that each version of the OS keeps getting
more power out of the existing machines, and even more from the latest.
Walter
On May 22, 2009, at 10:30 AM, Paul Bradforth wrote:
The Intel cored Macs have to be the way to go, in my opinion,
whether you’re an early adopter or a more circumspect upgrader. The
Power PC is long gone now. That’s not to say that you can’t do good
work on a ten-year old machine; I’ve done it, but I’d recommend
really strongly to get up to date as far as possible. I’m speaking
as someone who doesn’t have any kind of a steady job, and who has to
worry about being able to afford to put two new tyres on the car, by
the way …
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On 22 May 2009, at 15:42, hugh wrote:
new tyres?..what are they?
And I thought slicks were back in fashion - Freeway’s a “Formula 1”
application, isn’t it?!!
Colin
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I can’t speak for the iMac but I picked up the last of the Power Mac
G5 dualies a few months ago on eBay for a song. It looks brand new and
works great. Even came with an extra int. hd. I wanted a used Intel
Mac Pro but couldn’t afford it and this was my next best option. My
only regret with a G5 is that I’ll probably be unable to run Snow
Leopard, so in some ways I’m still in the same boat as I was before.
If it’s at all possible try to get a used Intel box.
Todd
On May 22, 2009, at 8:56 AM, hugh wrote:
Is there any indisputable reason that one shouldn’t buy a used G5
iMac? Intel-Core’s are a lot more money on the used market.
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I have an imac g4, with the swiveling adjustable arm on the dome base. I love the aesthetics of the model, but alas it is getting grueling to do things. When I upgraded to Tiger it really slowed down even though it was in the range of being able to handle it.
I’m waiting for Snow leopard also and was going to get an imac, but my current thinking is to get a Mac mini and max out the RAM and processor customization options, and then get a seperate display. I have my eye on a Dell display that looks really good and much cheaper then the apple cinema. This way I can just upgrade my Mini or maybe Tower someday and save on the screen. My lcd screen on my g4 is fine, its just the power mac old school computer that is getting more obsolete by the day. I used the new imac’s at our college computer lab for a photoshop class, they are awesome! I can’t wait for 24" of screen workspace. Working in FW is kind of cramped on my 15 inch.
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At 17:26 -0400 24/5/09, Waylen wrote:
I have an imac g4, with the swiveling adjustable arm on the dome
base. I love the aesthetics of the model, but alas it is getting
grueling to do things. When I upgraded to Tiger it really slowed
down even though it was in the range of being able to handle it.I’m waiting for Snow leopard also and was going to get an imac, but
my current thinking is to get a Mac mini and max out the RAM and
processor customization options, and then get a seperate display. I
have my eye on a Dell display that looks really good and much
cheaper then the apple cinema. This way I can just upgrade my Mini
or maybe Tower someday and save on the screen. My lcd screen on my
g4 is fine, its just the power mac old school computer that is
getting more obsolete by the day. I used the new imac’s at our
college computer lab for a photoshop class, they are awesome! I
can’t wait for 24" of screen workspace. Working in FW is kind of
cramped on my 15 inch.
Reading this prompted me to mention a freeware Sourceforge project
called Synergy
http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergy2
which allows you to use one keyboard and mouse across multiple machines.
I’ve only used it across Macs, with a 17" MBP on a bracket on the
left, Its 24" monitor extending its desktop in front of me, and the
19" screen of a Mac mini to the right of that. I have also tried it
with my old 17" PB to the right of that. The keyboard and mouse
connect to the mini, and the cursor and focus move across all
screens. The Mac Clipboard also moves, so you can copy from one host
and paste to the other.
There’s no splitting of an application across machines of course, but
I can work mainly on the MBP and have a secondary browser, email, and
other supplementary apps on the mini. It also works with Spaces, the
cursor panning across the current Space on each monitor.
If you try this, things to watch are:
When waking from sleep, use the Mac’s own keyboard. The shared one
works if things wake up right, but if you ever have ‘wake from sleep’
problems, using the shared keyboard for the client(s) will be more
awkward.
On waking, go to the screen of the one with the keyboard and press
then release all the meta keys - Command, Option, Ctrl and shift.
If you use ‘Hot Corners’ be prepared for some odd happenings. Putting
the keyboard host machine into Dashboard or Spaces ‘array’ mode, it
gets confused. Easy enough to put it right, but it disturbs your
workflow.
It’s easy to ‘lose’ the cursor when you have three or more screens.
David
–
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
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