MAC question: Is this a decent machine?

Question

I'm may be picking up a used MAC off of craigslist later today and am curious to how well it will perform.

Power MAC G4 350Mhz, 320 MB ram and a 10 gig HD.

It's running OS X. I would be using it for development purposes and maybe a little personal (hell I may even buy one on the future).

Will this be able to handle apps like photoshop, etc? Will the GUI be lagging alot? Is this overall a decent contender? I'm completely new to MAC's.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The GUI will be fine, but it is a much slower Mac than current models. You can run Photoshop, but it will be slow. You'd want to add more RAM and get a larger hard drive at the very least. The version of OS X that it's running is probably not the most current either.



Determine how much you'd end up spending on the RAM and hard drive, add that to the cost of the G4, and compare that to buying a new Mac. The new Macs are not only faster, with more RAM and larger hard drives, but they've got faster graphics, the latest OS, and you can also natively run Windows on them if you need to.

Answer 2

Your buying an old dog with older fleas. The processor is slow, the ram is minimal and the 10G HD is only has about 6-7 gigs remaining after OS10 was installed. It will be slow and you will spend a lot of time waiting.



If you plan on messing around with Photoshop, 7 gigs is not enough and it will be slow. I had the machine your looking at in work (replaced with a G4/466). I had a G4 733 with 1+ gig of ram and large HD at home that worked well. Have since upgraded to a G5). The G5 handles 2-3 gig ps files well. I'm hoping to combine the two machines from my basement into a G4 1/2 – 1083.



If your new to Apple, welcome to the family – where complaining and whining are kept to a mimimum.

Answer 3

I had one of those several years ago, but with more RAM and I think I had a bigger HD. You'll probably want to get an external HD to boost it up and add Ram.



My G4 was a decent machine. I was running Classic on it (OS 9 at the time - starting to feel OLD here) - and it did just fine. I ran Photoshop, Illustrator & Quark constantly as well as 2 web browers. It handled all the print graphics I threw at it and did fine for the web work I did. I did have lag on extreemly large psd files (like billboards, convention booth, etc.)- we're talking a couple gigs here - but that was it. Web graphics, print media, photos, no problems at all.



If you notice lag on Photoshop (or any program), highlight the application icon in the applications folder, click apple I and then raise the allocated memory. Be sure the program is closed when you do this.



I think you'll like it. You'll LOVE Photoshop on a Mac. I've never owned a PC, but have to use one at my current job. It drives me insane. Everything on my mac seems more intuitive and faster. You'll really like OSX. You may have the option to still run Classic on your G4 as well. That's pretty cool. For the newer versions of Shockwave to work, you'll need to run Safari (the web browser native to OSX) in rosetta mode (you check this box by going in like you do to change the allocated memory). This is an instance where Classic will come in handy. You can run IE or Netscape or Mozilla as well. I just happen to like Safari. You may run across a few little glitches like this, but they aren't anything major.



Enjoy!

Answer 4

only a 10 gig... Mac's are the best out there and they do last a long time... but i had an old green ibook with a 10 gig and it was ok, but the room ran out shortly...



i do recommend buying a mac, but this one might sell you short for photoshop... photoshop is a demanding program and i think you should hold off for a better mac... if you cant wait then buy this one and just get an external hard drive and maybe some cheap ram just for insurance.



but it will most likely run it fine

Answer 5

I would not want to have it as a primary machine if Photoshop was a large part of my job, but it should run fine as a debugging machine/web client/MP3 player. I have a G3 300MHz, 256MB of RAM and a 18GB SCSI HDD and it runs 10.2 server reasonably enough, though I haven't tried loading it down with anything yet.



If you intend to use it long-term, I would look into upgrading the HDD, and get the RAM up over 512MB. Just make sure you get the OSX install discs with it. (Also, note that most current Mac software requires 10.3.9 or up. 10.3.9 is a free upgrade from any other 10.3.x versions, and 10.5 is due out within a month or two.)

Answer 6

you will under no circumstances come across a Macintosh equipment at that value. The notebooks on my own *start up* at over $1000. Macbook: $1000 Macbook Air: $1800 Macbook professional: $2000 those are the fees at Apple's internet site. particularly no longer likely you will discover expenses that a lot decrease everywhere. Apple has its hardware priced intense to merchants, meaning no margins.

Answer 7

Go ahead.. though its a old machine still it works fine. Only thing is it will be very slow..

Answer 8

extremely crapy diablo 2 MIGHT run on that but just barely



maybe a flash game or 2