Good price for this iMac?

[gavstar]

3 years old, they're asking for £250...

Specs:
OS System is OS X Tiger 10.4.8
1 GHz PowerPC G4 Processor
256 MB DDR SDRAM
80 GB Hard Drive
CDR-RW
Flat screen display with 1024 x 768 resolution
NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX Grpahics Card (32MB VRAM)
Apple Speakers

[bobthemonkey]

Is that the anglepoise lamp one then.

Just in case you don't know , bootcamp won't run on it and OSX is a bit of a RAM hog.

[gavstar]

Yes it is. What's bootcamp? I know nothing about Macs but was thinking of it for my wife. Would this spec be good enough for video editing? I know Macs require less spec on paper, but how much less? Is there a way of comparing specs?

[anonymous-user]

gavstar said:

Yes it is. What's bootcamp? I know nothing about Macs but was thinking of it for my wife. Would this spec be good enough for video editing? I know Macs require less spec on paper, but how much less? Is there a way of comparing specs?

Allows you to boot into Windows!

[gavstar]

garyhun said:

gavstar said:

Yes it is. What's bootcamp? I know nothing about Macs but was thinking of it for my wife. Would this spec be good enough for video editing? I know Macs require less spec on paper, but how much less? Is there a way of comparing specs?

Allows you to boot into Windows!

Aah! Would defeat the object of having a Mac for me!

[PJR]

Seems alright for £250.. But keep in mind that it looks like a poverty spec iMac. So small screen by todays standards and no DVD burner, which you might have wanted for the video stuff.
Budget for more ram though. Like, 4 times as much, and it should run well enough. I assure you, it will be a miserable experience with 256mb.

P,

[magic torch]

Good price, and as the others have said, stick some more RAM in it.

They've got two slots, but only one is 'user accessible'. I'd recommend www.crucial.com/uk

[rednotdead]

and the accessible ram slot takes laptop SODIMMs so make sure you get the right stuff.

[ThePassenger]

gavstar said:

Would this spec be good enough for video editing? I know Macs require less spec on paper, but how much less? Is there a way of comparing specs?

Internet surfing, general office work and general video playback. As to actually editing video? No. Not in anything resembling a reasonable time frame. Adding more RAM... LOTS of RAM might help the situation, however the G4's are pretty gutless compared to the G5 series. So even with it maxed on RAM expect to leave it on overnight transcoding or rendering stuff (or even several days).

[PJ S]

Would also be expensive to fix if something were to go wrong.
Lots of labour involved in stripping and reassembling.

Honestly - no. Save the pennies and go for something more recent. Double that and you'd have a much better G5 iMac or Intel CD Mac mini, which you could slap any half decent LCD monitor on, as well as keyboard and mouse.
Have a look on ebay or the classifieds here *cough, cough*.

[gavstar]

Ok cheers chaps. Think I'll stick to my reasonable PC. Sounds like this mac is no better than what I already have. Thanks - that's £250 saved.

[hoganscrogan]

with a bit of extra ram it will be fine for video editing. If you are pulling stuff in from a DV cam and editing using iMovie it will be pretty much realtime. Transcoding shouldn't take days!!! I'm sure this machine will do a good job for you. [I did all the above on a 500mhz g$ laptop until recently, now use a 1.5ghz G4 laptop for same. Max the ram!

Edited by hoganscrogan on Wednesday 31st January 07:50