question about apple in general

[badllama]

question about apple in general

[badllama]

okay, im tired of windows, done the linux deal, so now im on to the final "normal" os out there, mac.

im looking into getting a decent system but i dont have a clue what to look for, i dont plan on doing much demanding stuff on the system, probably end up using it for internet and typing sort of deal.  

basicly, i would just like some info on how these systems are set up, whats "average" and what to look for, where should i get a machine, whats a good price/performace balance?

thanks

[chunkyeggfoo]

I think a G4 around the 400mhz range with 256MB of RAM would be considered average. But than again I always go above average, even when I can't afford it!

[badllama]

well, i dont if i cant afford it, so wheres a good place to be looking at these (retailer wise) online or wherever i guess.

[chunkyeggfoo]

If you're looking for "average", I'll go refurb from Apple.com because since you're not looking for the latest and the greatest, why look for new as well? Refurb machines from apple are top notch but with minor visual defects (scratches). Ask MTP about the quality of his refurb.

[Paul Howland]

Quote
Originally posted by: chunkyeggfoo
I think a G4 around the 400mhz range with 256MB of RAM would be considered average. But than again I always go above average, even when I can't afford it!

Well, I'm still not a Mac owner and nor have I ever played with one.  So take what I'm about to say with the largest grain of salt you can find.  BUT ... in my recent research on the Internet looking for answers to much the same question, it seems that many people are rather disappointed with the performance of OS X  with any machine much less than ~1GHz G4 plus at least 512MB memory.  More memory equals better performance is a universal truth out there -  and 512MB seems to be the minimum for good performance with OS X.  It is also true that the performance of OS X has improved immeasurably from 10.1 to 10.3, so maybe the situation has eased for owners of the slower G4s.

However, as I say, all of the above is nothing more than an impression created whilst browsing many Mac websites and forums.  I have no first hand experience.  So, take it as nothing more than a "possible issue" and try a machine yourself to find out.  It would be a shame to try out the world of Apple and then dismiss it, simply because you ended up getting an underpowered machine.

[Connor]

Quote
Originally posted by: Paul Howland

Quote
Originally posted by: chunkyeggfoo
I think a G4 around the 400mhz range with 256MB of RAM would be considered average. But than again I always go above average, even when I can't afford it!

Well, I'm still not a Mac owner and nor have I ever played with one.  So take what I'm about to say with the largest grain of salt you can find.  BUT ... in my recent research on the Internet looking for answers to much the same question, it seems that many people are rather disappointed with the performance of OS X  with any machine much less than ~1GHz G4 plus at least 512MB memory.  More memory equals better performance is a universal truth out there -  and 512MB seems to be the minimum for good performance with OS X.  It is also true that the performance of OS X has improved immeasurably from 10.1 to 10.3, so maybe the situation has eased for owners of the slower G4s.

However, as I say, all of the above is nothing more than an impression created whilst browsing many Mac websites and forums.  I have no first hand experience.  So, take it as nothing more than a "possible issue" and try a machine yourself to find out.  It would be a shame to try out the world of Apple and then dismiss it, simply because you ended up getting an underpowered machine.

Large pinch of salt indeed, on a 400Mhz G4 with only 320Mb RAM I find OS X easily well powered (remember this was the state of the art when OS X was written) It powers past my PC in just about any task I throw at it Folding, Rendering (Bryce 5 Benchmark), Gaming (GLQuake Benchmark) and that's all on OS X 10.1 the improvements made in recent years should seen 10.3 improve on all of that.

It's possbile the reports you have been reading are by people withvery specific requirements or are comparing against OS 9 or something, but against XP the performance should be tangible.

[JhuFrank]

Large pinch of salt for me too, please. OSX runs quite nicely on G4 400 hardware. I have run it on G3s with very little problem as long as you have lots of RAM.  www.lowendmac.com has a pretty nice listing of the older macs, price points, performance tweaks and listings of vendors who sell them. G4 400-866 are a nice range of machines to buy used right now. Dual 533s are very popular but are pretty rare.  One of the early Quicksilvers would be a very nice machine to run OSX on. Again, throw lots of RAM at the sucker. My G3 B&W runs OSX very well, but uses 640 megs of RAM.

[badllama]

thanks guys, ill look around at those two places and see what i find.

[badllama]

whats the diffrence between the G3 and the G4?  because ive seen both at 400mhz and even some G3 at 600MHz, so whats the diffrence between the two?

[MTP]

yeah, same here but make mine a truck load of salt.

My very first Apple I jsut bought about 5-6 months ago.  Had 576M of Ram and was a G3 466.  Ran 10.3.5 just fine.  I never saw any real slwo downs.
I just replaced it with a G4 800 iBook with 1.128G of Ram and to be honest I did not see a huge speed increase with 10.3.5 on it.

The secret to Apple OS is RAM, it loves it, needs it, and runs better when you cram as your apple can handle.

I would say the average for the iBook is between the G3 900 and the G4 1G.
Allot of people bought the G3 900 series just before the first G4 came out and many did not jump right over. Those with the older G3 iBooks jumped on the G4 800 so there are allot of users out there with that model.
The current 1G iBook is identical to the G4 800 in regards to the added hardware (hdd, optical, vid, etc..) but the cpu has a larger cache.

iBooks may be updated this October as that is the normal time frame for that series of Apple hardware (every 6 months).

I believe you will see possibly the 1.2G in the 12" and a superdrive as well.  But thats my guess.

[Paul Howland]

Just goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you read on the web ;-)

Salt's in the post.

[Connor]

Quote
Originally posted by: badllama
whats the diffrence between the G3 and the G4?  because ive seen both at 400mhz and even some G3 at 600MHz, so whats the diffrence between the two?

It's the technology used to make the chip like the difference between a P3 and a P4 you can obtain some P3's that are faster than the early P4's but the P4 is the better technology.

[MTP]

Exactly, kinda like comparing a PII instruction set to the PIII instruction set.

If I could make a few "wishes" for the possible new iBooks in Oct it would be for the 12" model to receive a better GPU, maybe the ATI 9600 Mobile, bump the cpu to the 1.2G, make all the hdd a 5400rpm version and add a Superdrive.

I'd buy one in a heart beat.

[badllama]

okay, so can someone help me find the refurb section on apple, i cant find it.

[MTP]

HERE

[badllama]

woah, still way too much for me to be spending, but thanks anyway, ill have to jump into apple later when i have more money, but thanks for the info guys.

[JhuFrank]

What is your budget, Llama? There are many stores that sell used apples through the website that I showed you that are a heck of a lot cheaper than apple refurbs. You should be able to get into a nice box for about 5-600 bucks.

[MTP]

yeah my refurb G4 800 12" iBook only cost $749 through the Apple Store.

[badllama]

i was looking around 500, but that would need to be everything with hardware, software, monitor and all that kinda getup.

[chunkyeggfoo]

I would suggest a low-end iMac.

[MTP]

I would suggest using EveryMAC to determine specs of machines, but than you can get decent prices for mac stuff at Powermax and smalldog.

Plus do not forget Ebay.

[Tetsusaiga]

Being a Mac user for about 5 years now, I've made the switch from OS 9 to 10.... then 10.1, 10.2, and finally 10.3. Now I've been through some machines and none seemed to "choke" really bad but I'll rate them on a simple system of comparison (1-10) to my newest machine, my PowerBook G4 1.5GHZ with 512 DDR and 128 9700.

iBook Tangerine (12") (4)
300 MHZ G3
288 RAM (32&256)
20GB HD
4 MB VRAM
CD-Rom

iMac Tangerine (15") (5)
333MHZ G3
192 RAM (64&256) "Max slots are 128 so kind of a waste"
6GB HD
6 MB VRAM
CD-Rom

iBook Snow (14.1") (
900 MHZ G3
384 RAM (128&256)
40GB HD
32 MB VRAM
CD-RW/DVD Combo

PowerBook (15.2") (10)
1.5 GHZ G4
512 RAM (256&256)
80GB HD
128 MB VRAM
CD-RW/DVD Combo

I've since then sold the Tangerine iBook for the Snow iBook simply cause movies lagged on the weak VRAM and many games needed more torque from the processor. I bought the Tangerine iMac for my "switcher" parents from eBay for 175$ for simple web browsing and e-mail and casual music listening. The right before my educational discount left me when I graduated I bought a new PowerBook to replcae my iBook... just because.

[Zut50]

You could easily get a latest generation iMac G4 on eBay for £400-£500! Trust me, Ive spent plenty of drool looking at those pages!  

[badllama]

do macs use standard ide harddrives?  like, if i got a new harddrive and wanted to add it to a mac it could format and see it as a new drive?  just like a pc would?