hi all,im about to purchase an emac g4 1.25 with 512 ram,superdrive and standard configration for $450.Is this a good deal for an 18 months old machine?
i will be doing maya work,final cut and photoshop work on it.
Thanks guys for your inputs~

Not a bad price, but not a great price IMHO.

The emac is a bit of an unloved Mac to be honest. It's big, the screen is crapola and the G4 is really feeling it's age.

For Apps you could do low-end Photoshop with no problems; web stuff and so on.

For FinalCut and Maya, it would be painful. You would at least need more RAM. Not even Sure that Final Cut will run on that spec?


So it's an OK machine if you are on a really tight budget.

Otherwise I'd hunt around for an Intel MacMini and twin it with a cheap 17" LCD. Thats a way better solution. More expensive, but better :-D

And the Mini can be upgraded as well. You can just pop in a new CPU.

You might wanna double check that the Mini can run Final Cut I suppose.

I run Aperture on my MacBook, and that has the same graphics.

I wouldn't be going for an old G4 if you want to be doing pro application sorta stuff.

Looking for a intel mini would probably be the best option or perhaps a G5 of some sort if you can find one at the right price.

Also you will probably want a lot more than 512mb ram in whatever machine you end up getting.

theov

thanks guys i think i know what to do
i guess ill continue looking around for a g5 or mini.Will powerbooks be good enough for final cut cos im thinking of going portable also thanks.

Will depend completely on what Powerbook you are looking at getting - the first Powerbook came out 16 years ago, with the most recent model only being discontinued in April last year!

I'd hardly call the screen crapola. It's almost as good as the screen on my iMac G5. But I do agree about the other points, for pro applications the eMac would be pretty close to scraping the bottom of the barrel I would imagine.

You're going to really feel it running Maya on that mac Photoshop should be ok though. Final Cut won't be great either. Actually I'm almost certain you'll need a lot more ram for Maya and FCP.

I don't think Maya is a universal binary though, so a G4/G5 might not be a bad option if you can get a quick one cheaply.

marc,so you are saying if i upgrade the ram on this mac,it should do the job?

maybe a coresolo mini would be better - they were going for around 600 new just before xmas - hunt around

Really?

Emac screen: 17-inch (16-inch viewable) flat CRT. Max res of 1280 by 960 pixels at 72Hz

iMac G5 17": 17-inch (viewable) widescreen TFT active-matrix LCD, 1440 x 900 pixels


The eMac display has always looked rough to me. Especially when compared to a modern LCD. :-)

But thats just my opinion :-)

Find a G5 PowerMac (as fast as you can afford), load it up with all the RAM you can afford and pick up a cheap monitor to plug into it.

Go to G5 & at least 1gb RAM.

There's a big difference between being capable of running the apps, and running them really quickly. I definitely think that mac will be good enough for Photoshop, but it may not be acceptable for FCP and Maya. It really depends on your expectations.

I've been hoping that G5 Towers will come down in price - but they seem to be holding strong.

Any pointers on where to get a cheap one?

their is a G5 dual on ebay atm with 1.5Gb ram $1400 auction