Don't you hate those "I have no idea what to do" threads.....

Sorry, but here it comes.......I have no idea what to do........and would just Love some feedback


I am Apple user from way back, but am a real novice, with no real technical ability and am worried a salesman would take a bit of advantage of the situation.....I am 2 hrs north of brissy and am thinking of going into NextByte in the city one weekend.


I have 2 Mac's.....

- iMac Power PC G3
running Mac OS 9.2
266mhz
64mb RAM
9.55 Hard Drive
CD Readable drive only

and

- G4 tower
running Mac OS 10.3.9
400 mhz
256 mb Ram
19 Hard Drive
CD Read & Write, but no DVD


My eldest daughter is just 7, but getting to that age of being able to do stuff, and I am finding that even real basic education games don't run well on either....I'm talking simple maths games and there is an Elmo Game etc etc....the screens stutter, and it is way to slow.

I see many people still have G3 and G4 machines and wonderring what you do with them.....is it worthwhile upgrading these machines so they can run some basic games for the kids?

What would you have to do to upgrade them, and how much money is worth throwing at them?

or, I see some second hand iMac's for like $700 - $900 and they come with heaps of Hard Drive storage and running at 1.25 or close to 2 ghz.


is it worthwhile keeping the old G3 and G4, or just move to a newer machine altogether.


appreciate any thoughts....

For these machines, the bottleneck is the bus speed (the speed at which electrical signals travel around the motherboard between components, e.g. between processor and ram). No matter how much you upgrade them in terms of hard drive space, ram, video cards, even processor upgrades, these machines will still be somewhat crippled by the bus speed (i think its 66mhz for both your machines but i may be wrong on this).

Mac OS 10 will run a bit better on your g4 with more ram - say 512 or even 1gb - and by comparison, to running 10.3.9, your g4 will run way way quicker under os9. (depending on what programs you run etc, you might prefer osx though).

So in a nutshell I'd say your idea of spending $700 on a secondhand 2ghz imac (if it's a g5 imac you're talking about) would be much better value (i.e. would get you better results) than throwing money at your g4 or g3. Still, at this price you will get a reasonably old mac (sadly, new macs have ridiculously high prices), but it will be able to trudge on for a few more years longer than your existing computers.

RAM is your problem. See if you can max out the machines, although SDRAM is getting expensive these days. On the other hand, maybe try purchasing a faster iMac G3. I picked up a G3 600MHz Snow for $99 the other day, as well as a 500MHz Blue Dalmatian for $59.

it's 66Mhz i believe for the imac
and 100MHZ bus for the Powermac G4

New Machine!

Cmon, that hardware is ancient, no offence. You'll be lucky on what kind of stuff you COULD be able to run on there, and even then you'll be limited in your choices.

If I was that salesperson, I'd recommend that you'd buy a new computer.

iMac's start at $1698, see if you can get some sort of "trade-in" deal from the guys at Next Byte.

For now, I'm advocating a new machine.

As a general rule, if you need to spend more on upgrades than what the machine is actually worth, it's simply not worth it. A G4 tower is worth < $100 these days, the iMac < $30.

The G4 tower can be upgraded cheaply enough if you know where to look however - as leon mentioned. Don't bother going to Nextbyte and asking their advice, as they'll not be able to offer any expertise for an old Mac.

JB

Forget this for the iMac G3.
You should be able to pick up 512 mb sticks of ram for that Sawtooth for $70-$80.
You should be able to buy a 7200 RPM 120Gb ATA HD for $100-$110.
You should be able to pick up a 32 or 64mb AGP video card for $50-$70.
All are easy to install. Combined they will give a very good performance boost and should be more than adequate to run your daughters games on.
After a few years , retire this machine to a file server/photo storage box.
Sure ,a new Mac as the guys above say will be better but it depends on your budget too.
Just another perspective.

Stewie

Maybe try looking around for older edutainment titles from the era of this machine, that will run perfectly on it. I'd imagine you should be able to find them on thrift shops and on eBay. Easier than upgrading the machine, and cheaper than getting a new machine.

Further to stewie's good points:

1. Is it really a sawtooth (or is it a yikes)?
2. Is the maximum RAM per stick 256 or 512? (total max 1GB or 2GB?) You should be able to pick up pc100 SDRAM (or pc133 SDRAM which will run at 100) for pretty cheap (e.g. $20 to 30 for a 256mb stick).
3. You can get a 500GB WD Caviar ATA (IDE) drive, 7200 RPM, 16MB cache, for $140 cash. 120GB HDDs are more like $50 to $80 depending on where you shop. Remember that if you want to use a drive that is >128GB in this machine you will need an ATA expansion card (about $50 secondhand), or else any larger drive you buy, the machine will only recognise it as 128GB.

thanks heaps for the thoughts

so to get it half decent its got to be costing somewhere around $2-300

and even after that it is still limited in what it would do right.....?

so if i spend $700 rather than $300, I will get a far superior machine correct.....?.....faster, bigger memory , better operating system.


and although you say its easy to install, I guarantee as soon as I open up the Tower, I'll touch something that I shouldn't and the whole lot will go up in a cloud of smoke...:-(

From what I am hearing, i am thinking to spend $700 or so may be a wiser investment......

I may just keep the old G4 tower though, as it may be OK just to chuck some photo's on or something.....20 Gig's must hold something?

thanks heaps guys......

you've summed it up pretty accurately i reckon. just note that the $700 machine will still be an ageing warrior (though you will still notice improvement).

HD prices must have dropped even more rtc than when I last bought a desktop one - about two years ago.

Stewie

Yeah you can now get a 160GB IDE drive (western digital caviar of course) for $59 new from MSY. (dunno if you can still get 120GB new or not).

The 500GB IDE drives are now $125 (was $140 when I bought a SATA one a couple of mths ago).