12-28-2010, 01:41 AM

Hi there everyone,

Recently I upgraded my windows laptop for work purposes. So now I have a spare laptop. Posted it up on local classifieds checking to see what someone will offer me for it.

I would rather trade than sell and get something and might not buy for myself.

So the one offer that did come up was for a 2006 Mac Pro DP 2ghz G5, 2GB RAM and 120gb HDD. I was used in a sound studio and they have upgraded to Intel Macs.

I spend a lot of time working on specific photographic projects and shoot a varied amount of Fine Art images. And I was thinking this could be a really fun tool to get for nothing basically.

Just want to pick the brains of the forum a bit.

The obvious limitation with the G5 units come in no support beyond 10.5, currently the machine is loaded with 10.4 but I have sourced a unused copy of 10.5 still in the packaging which I will get if I go for this offer.

Correct me if I am wrong.
With 10.5 I can run Lightroom 2.x and Photoshop CS4 I can upgrade to memory to at least 8gb and slot in two SATA drives.

All in all a very solid machine to be used exclusively for editing.

Or I am missing the boat completely? hehe

Thanks in advance.

12-28-2010, 08:42 AM

Originally Posted by charlfourie

So the one offer that did come up was for a 2006 Mac Pro DP 2ghz G5, 2GB RAM and 120gb HDD.

Just wanted to let you know that this computer you speak of is not a "Mac Pro G5". Given the info in the posting...it's probably a Powermac G5 with dual 2.0ghz PPC processors. The reason why it's not a Mac Pro is...Mac Pro's ONLY have Intel processors.

Originally Posted by charlfourie

Correct me if I am wrong.
With 10.5 I can run Lightroom 2.x and Photoshop CS4...

Look up the system requirements for both of these applications...and you will have your answer.

Originally Posted by charlfourie

I can upgrade to memory to at least 8gb and slot in two SATA drives.

Regarding the ram...it depends. There were three different versions of this Powermac G5...two could be upgraded to 8 gig, and one could be upgraded to 4 gig.

As far as the hard drives...yes you can have 2 internal SATA hard drives.

The last thing I would mention is...this whole deal (to me) depends on the price. You don't want to over pay for it. As you mentioned...OS 10.5 (10.5.8) is the newest OS version that the G5 computers can run. So if you pay too much for this computer...that money would then be better spent on an Intel-based Mac.

HTH,

- Nick

12-28-2010, 03:52 PM

As it is a G5 as Nick has correctly pointed out do not pay any more than $300 for it. More than that, also consideration as to the cost of memory, put it towards a Mac Pro which will run later operating systems.

To tell them apart at a glance, G5's have a single optical drive door on the front, Mac Pros have two,