Any Mac people here?

[qube_TA]

I'm looking for a new PC and have been tempted to go down the Mac route, I've been using Linux for years and although I like it Mrs qube_TA sometimes struggles with it.

I've been offered one of these:

http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&mod...

With an ATI card n 3GB of RAM for £500.

Looks mint, runs the latest OS fine, however as I have about 10 mins experience with one of these I've no idea whether or not it's worth the money or worth bothering with a G5 now that they've gone Intel.

It doesn't seem to be a huge leap from using Linux with a Gnome desktop so should be easy enough to pick up.

Comments would be appreciated.

Cheers.

q.

[colinjm]

I've just bought a 3 year old G5 iMac, i've owned it for all of 5 days now, and I love it.

I've only spent what must be 10 hours on it, but it seems excellent, and plenty fast enough at the moment (1.8ghz, 1gb RAM, OS X 10.4).

I was a Mac virgin, and it's simply an impulse buy. My only issue with it at the moment is what i'm going to use it for. I have it set up next to my PC, I use the PC for web/email/photo & video editing, and really although I know the Mac will do that, I dont need it for that.

I want to use it in the lounge for day to day use, but will need to get my wife to try it out first as if she doesnt like it, then it'll only be me using it.

I'd definately recommend one, I think I could see myself moving away from Windows completely with the Mac in the future....it's just a case of making the jump.

[sjg]

Sounds reasonable if you've got a monitor to use already, you aren't planning to virtualize Windows, and need/want the expandability. Everything these days is universal binaries which are compiled for PowerPC as well as Intel - PowerPC will go on being supported for a while yet.

Thing is, the iMac is really good value, either new or picking up one of the previous generation. Jigsaw24 are doing the previous 20" 2.16Ghz, 250Gb iMacs for around £700 - it's not a lot more to get a nice screen, a quicker system overall and the new architecture. They take bog-standard laptop DDR2 RAM which is cheap as chips these days - a 2Gb kit is £31 from Crucial, or the max 3Gb would be about £60.

[paddyhasneeds]

If the G5 is single CPU I'd buy a Mini.

Unless you really need the expansion space I can't see it making sense to buy a PowerPC based Mac.

[qube_TA]

paddyhasneeds said:

If the G5 is single CPU I'd buy a Mini.

Unless you really need the expansion space I can't see it making sense to buy a PowerPC based Mac.

It's a Dual 2.5Ghz G5 Powermac with 3.5gb ram with decent GFX & Leopard OS.

[cyberface]

Make sure it's one of the later revisions. I had the first dual 2 GHz G5 and, whilst it never failed or caused any trouble, the temperature of the CPUs and especially the northbridge was way over spec. CPUs went up to 95 deg C and the northbridge would hover around 114 under heavy load.

I wonder if that machine is still working? I sold it and bought a G5 Quad, which I'm typing this on.

The big big differences between the G5 and the Intel powermacs are:

• Intel 'mac pro' machines can virtualise Windows. Important to some, not so to others.
• G5 machines can 'feel' slow in GUI and interpreted-code or branchy applications... but in optimised streaming data apps they are still reasonably quick. Given their age, compared to modern Intel CPUs, my G5 Quad can still keep up with encoding / photoshop type tasks.
• Apple shafted all their customers with graphics card options for the G5s. If the machine in question has a good graphics card, it's an option. If it's got a crap one, then don't buy it. You'll have a nightmare getting an upgrade. I wasted £600 from the US on a 'legit' apple upgrade card for my Quad but they sent me a broken card and wouldn't answer any emails. Established company too, not some flybynight firm.
• Intel machines will run old PPC apps in Rosetta emulation and may not be as fast as a G5. I'm thinking MS Office, Adobe CS. The new versions of CS and Office will be universal but the new Office won't support VBA - if you use macros then you are stuck with the old Office. Will you need to buy new software? This is a big consideration.

Other than that, they're fast enough for most things except some games due to the GPU problem.

I have 8 Macs and could describe myself as a Mac enthusiast I see no reason to get rid of my Quad for a Mac Pro just yet... last of the proper 'different' Macs I guess... though an 8-core Mac Pro may tempt me

[qube_TA]

It's the one in the link above.

[RoadRailer]

qube_TA said:

I'm looking for a new PC and have been tempted to go down the Mac route, I've been using Linux for years and although I like it Mrs qube_TA sometimes struggles with it.

I've been offered one of these:

http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&mod...

With an ATI card n 3GB of RAM for £500.

Looks mint, runs the latest OS fine, however as I have about 10 mins experience with one of these I've no idea whether or not it's worth the money or worth bothering with a G5 now that they've gone Intel.

It doesn't seem to be a huge leap from using Linux with a Gnome desktop so should be easy enough to pick up.

Comments would be appreciated.

Cheers.

q.

I've got a dual 1.8ghz one of extremely similar vintage - 4GB ram, ATI 9600 GFX and 660GB of storage, no issues at all (except for the bugs in leopard )

Munches through video encoding and the odd bit of multipass audio compressing at a fair old lick.

Will make a very capable server too.

[eyebeebe]

cyberface said:

* Intel machines will run old PPC apps in Rosetta emulation and may not be as fast as a G5. I'm thinking MS Office, Adobe CS. The new versions of CS and Office will be universal but the new Office won't support VBA - if you use macros then you are stuck with the old Office. Will you need to buy new software? This is a big consideration.

Why won't it support VBA? That seems like a curious omission!

[kiwisr]

cyberface said:

The new versions of CS and Office will be universal but the new Office won't support VBA - if you use macros then you are stuck with the old Office. Will you need to buy new software? This is a big consideration.

NeoOffice will support VBA and is free. In addition Office 2008 will support Applescript, although no good if you are sharing/cross-platform with Windows users.

But having said that on my MacBook Pro, Office 2004 runs fast enough for me, in fact it runs faster than it did on my Powerbook G4.