Mac recommendations?
 

As much as I'd like to purchase a new G5, I'm thinking about upgrading to last years technology. Apple and all their resellers are selling the PowerMac G4 1.25 Ghz machine for about $1300.

You Mac guys - any personal experience with this one? I'd rather not get into the PC vs Mac debate. I reluctantly have a couple of those Win boxes in the household too.

Thanks
Sherwood

I have had great results with my dual 1.25 machine (ie the last of the G4 line, mirror door or blowhole version). I have also had a very stable machine with a dual 1gig G4 of the previous design (Quicksilver).

I would pick up the fastest dual G4 blowhole. Pack it with at least a gig of ram and you'll be ready to rock.

Always use the right tool for the job...that said, what do you plan to use this machine for??? Is it for websurfing? 3D rendering? DVD authoring? Game playing? Or DTP?

i spend 8+ hours a day on macs (mostly photoshop). i have a g4 733mhz machine and currently content with the spd. also have s g4 450 mhz cube at home and also content with it as well. save money and buy the machines they're trying to clear out. when it comes down to it saving money over speed is more important or is it because i get paid by the hr? just think of all the money you saved when you're staring at a progress bar.

I have 7 G4s. Three at home and four at work. Both areas are on airport networks. I have run my office on Macs for 15 years. I have not tried the G5, but the G4s are amazing. They are fast and OSX is extremely stable.

Unless you are crunching huge files for the defense department or something, I endorse the G4s whole-heartedly. I haven't had a bit of trouble.

Even for big computing they rock. You can make G4 clusters:

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2001/05/18/supercomputer/

http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/Projects/PPC_cluster/construction.html

And the new G5 clusters will be very fast:

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/09/22/virginia/

No clusters in my house, but there are 2 G4 Ti books and a dual proc G4 (on Airport), and at work on our mini "campus" we have about 120 Macs, split half and half between laptops and desktops.

My Mac needs are modest; mostly writing, DTP, some photoshop and surfing.

I understand with "comparable" machines, Windows machines are able to surf faster. Is this true? The 1.8 and 2.4 Ghz Windows machines in my home are really quick. Is this a MSoft conspiracy?

Sherwood

Surf faster? That would surprise me.

I've got the Quicksilver G4, and a G3 Powerbook. The speeds of each? It hardly seems to matter anymore. They're both plenty fast for Photoshop, Final Cut, Safari, and Word Processing.

It used to be that each successive generation would make a meaningful productivity gain, as chip speed increased. I remember having to break word processing documents into 15-page pieces so they wouldn't slow down the Mac IIci I was working on. At some point, though, these machines simply sailed past the demands of anything but -- I guess -- the types of software that I'm still not using. Even editing video seems to be pretty much the same on either of my two machines.

When it was time to replace my Powerbook, I kind of instinctively looked at the top-of-the-line Titanium models -- and then realized that the iBook was fine for what I use a laptop for. As it turns out, it's pretty much the only computer I use, in spite of the faster one on the desk.

I mean, I'm glad they keep making them faster, but the applications that need that kind of speed simply haven't found their way into my life.

Maybe I'm getting old. ;)

Not older Jack, just smarter. My home PC is still an original P233 w/256mb running win98. I hate that version of windoz but for word processing, web surfing, mp3 files, pictures, etc... it's perfect. Computers are tools, if they do the job why upgrade?