Life of the G4 chip??

Basically, I want a mac mini for my TV.

I can either buy new or second hand. I have been offered a G4 at the half the price of a new one. So its something to consider. But I am consured for its life, G4s will run leopard so after leopard bye bye. But thats a way off and not really a consideration yet. Its software I wa¥orried about. If all the is heading universal, the the next step is Intel only, am I right?

How long before this starts happening accross the board?

I hear that this is starting to happen already (I recall seeing one thread where a new program was Universal only). However, I don't think you need to worry about it in any serious way for the next few years, given the huge population of PPC based Macs out there. Manufacturers would be enormously restricting their available market if they went Intel only. I am pretty sure that for the lifetime of your G4, you will be just fine. Certainly that is the gamble I took when I bought this PPC based Mac back in May 2006!

I figured as much and its a second machine anyway. So should be ok.

You should be fine. "Universal" means the App will run on both PPC and Intel Macs. Apple stopped supporting the original G3 series in Tiger and even though they don't list the G3 iMacs as Tiger compatible, they are. I suspect the G4 will be supported for the next 2 maybe 3 OSX cycles at least.