[SATLUG] [OT] Mac G4 dual 500mhz

[Brad Knowles]

On 10/30/07, Alex Bartonek wrote:

>  A friend of mine is selling a G4 mac..It has OS 10.4.2
>  with 1.25 gigs of ram, DVD+RW with keyboard and mouse
>  for $100.  I'm not looking to install Linux but have
>  been wanting to try out OSX.   Speed wise, would this
>  be responsive enough?

Well, if it was a 1GHz G4, it would probably be fine for Mac OS X 
10.4 -- I have laptops that are that speed (or slightly slower) and 
they're fine.  The RAM is fine, too.  Absolute minimum would be 
256MB, suggested bare minimum would be 512MB, and anything 1GB or 
higher should be fine for most regular tasks, and even a little light 
Photoshop work, etc....

However, with a dual-processor/core machine, you don't see a full 
doubling of performance with the second CPU/core.  Maybe you see a 
25-50% improvement in some cases, but there are some significant 
single-threaded processes on the system where you won't see any 
benefit.

Unfortunately, the Finder is one of those important single-threaded 
programs, and that is what determines most of how you interact with 
the system and how fast you perceive that it works.


Photoshop will take advantage of however many processors you have, 
but that may or may not help you in this case.


You might be able to get a processor upgrade at a reasonable price, 
which would allow you a much better idea of how modern Macs work with 
Mac OS X, and might even make it possible for you to run Mac OS X 
10.5 "Leopard", which just came out.

Checking the reviews and price lists for used machines at 
<http://macreviewzone.com/html/reviews/guides/individual/04/powermac/g4-867-vs-2xg4-500.shtml>, 
it looks to me like $100 would be a very good deal for this box -- 
many similar boxes are going for $500-700 or more.

However, whether that box will let you do what you want to do, is 
another question.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>