05-25-2005, 12:36 PM

I went along to a computer auction last Friday with the intention of buying a P4 PC to upgrade my aging P3. I bidded on a few but they were all going for a bit more than I was willing to pay. I was about to walk out when a heap of G3 iMacs came up and I was surprised to see that there wasn't much interest. I was even more surpised when I found myself bidding and winning nice little blue 500mhz job with 192mb ram/20gb HDD and OSX 10.2 for a measly $120 AUST (about $85US). The most surprising thing was that I'd never considered buying a Mac. I knew that they are the platform of choice for graphic designers, video editors etc. but I'd always thought that they were expensive and wouldn't improve my computing experience significantly. So anyway, I drove home thinking that I'll have a play with it and if it's no use to me then I'll just sell it off.

Well, five days later there is absolutely no chance of that happening. I'm hooked. For a 4-5 year old computer with relatively low specs it performs brilliantly. I know it's been said many times in this forum, but everything just seems to work the way it should. 'Installing' programs is a breeze, everything I've plugged into it has worked perfectly (and immediately), everything loads quickly, applications interact seemlessly, it's compact, quiet, funky, relatively portable etc etc. I was also surpised to learn that it takes a standard ide HDD and SD RAM (it now has 384mb, courtesy of the PC).

But it's the iLife stuff that's really sucked me in. iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes are all sensational (even though the versions I have are all from 2002). They leave the proprietry Microsoft equivalents for dead. I've just finished editing some video tonight and it was and was sooo much easier, smoother and more intuitive than doing it on my PC. iTunes has such a clean and simple interface and some geat features - once I've put a bigger hard drive in I'll move my mp3 collection over, hook it up to the stereo and use it as a 'jukebox'. iPhoto has everything I need in a photo organiser with some very useful editing features.

Anyway, apologies for rambling on, I'll get to my question. Whilst my machine obviously doesn't have a DVD burner, I was hoping that I could still use iDVD to create an iso image (this evidently can be done with a tweak) which I could transfer (via network) to my PC for burning. However I note that the minimum system requirements are well above my specs. Does this mean that it simply can't be installed on my machine or does it mean that it will just run slowly? Alternatively, can anyone suggest another DVD authoring program that will run okay on low end machine such as mine? I suspect I might be trying to push the limits of this machine. Perhaps I'll go back to those auctions and see if I can pick up a G4 .......

Cheers

05-25-2005, 12:58 PM

My guess would be that iDVD will refuse to install on a G3 system.
iDVD uses the "Velocity Engine" (AltiVec) vector unit of the G4/G5 for encoding. The G3 simply has no facility to use AltiVec instructions.

05-25-2005, 01:27 PM

Originally Posted by Grazza

I went along to a computer auction last Friday with the intention of buying a P4 PC to upgrade my aging P3. I bidded on a few but they were all going for a bit more than I was willing to pay. I was about to walk out when a heap of G3 iMacs came up and I was surprised to see that there wasn't much interest. I was even more surpised when I found myself bidding and winning nice little blue 500mhz job with 192mb ram/20gb HDD and OSX 10.2 for a measly $120 AUST (about $85US). The most surprising thing was that I'd never considered buying a Mac. I knew that they are the platform of choice for graphic designers, video editors etc. but I'd always thought that they were expensive and wouldn't improve my computing experience significantly. So anyway, I drove home thinking that I'll have a play with it and if it's no use to me then I'll just sell it off.

Well, five days later there is absolutely no chance of that happening. I'm hooked. For a 4-5 year old computer with relatively low specs it performs brilliantly. I know it's been said many times in this forum, but everything just seems to work the way it should. 'Installing' programs is a breeze, everything I've plugged into it has worked perfectly (and immediately), everything loads quickly, applications interact seemlessly, it's compact, quiet, funky, relatively portable etc etc. I was also surpised to learn that it takes a standard ide HDD and SD RAM (it now has 384mb, courtesy of the PC).

But it's the iLife stuff that's really sucked me in. iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes are all sensational (even though the versions I have are all from 2002). They leave the proprietry Microsoft equivalents for dead. I've just finished editing some video tonight and it was and was sooo much easier, smoother and more intuitive than doing it on my PC. iTunes has such a clean and simple interface and some geat features - once I've put a bigger hard drive in I'll move my mp3 collection over, hook it up to the stereo and use it as a 'jukebox'. iPhoto has everything I need in a photo organiser with some very useful editing features.

Anyway, apologies for rambling on, I'll get to my question. Whilst my machine obviously doesn't have a DVD burner, I was hoping that I could still use iDVD to create an iso image (this evidently can be done with a tweak) which I could transfer (via network) to my PC for burning. However I note that the minimum system requirements are well above my specs. Does this mean that it simply can't be installed on my machine or does it mean that it will just run slowly? Alternatively, can anyone suggest another DVD authoring program that will run okay on low end machine such as mine? I suspect I might be trying to push the limits of this machine. Perhaps I'll go back to those auctions and see if I can pick up a G4 .......

Cheers

You should of bought me one, but I live in the US. Good buy although

05-25-2005, 02:58 PM

good one and congrats on a great deal

05-26-2005, 12:25 AM

Originally Posted by technologist

My guess would be that iDVD will refuse to install on a G3 system.
iDVD uses the "Velocity Engine" (AltiVec) vector unit of the G4/G5 for encoding. The G3 simply has no facility to use AltiVec instructions.

exactly right. I'm sorry but no iDVD. Well, since you like the mac so much, you could always sell the old Mac and the PC, and then get a new Mac!

05-26-2005, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by rs2sensen

exactly right. I'm sorry but no iDVD. Well, since you like the mac so much, you could always sell the old Mac and the PC, and then get a new Mac!

Funny you should mention that ..... the G3 will be off as soon a find a G4 PowerMac, which will fit nicely into the hole in my desk left by the PC tower. The PC is going to new home tomorrow (to my mother in law's place) in exchange for her compact desktop box which I'm going to bolt underneath the desk out of the way (a deskbottom box ...). We still need a PC for the kid's games, but the Mac will be the main computer. I've even found a nifty little switch thing which let's you run run two computers through one monitor/mouse/keyboard/speakers. Life is grand.

Thanks for clearing up the iDVD issue for me. There's certainly a different feel about these forums. PC forums often seem to be quite competitive- ie. people bragging about their "kickass video card" or their amazing overclocked "rig". Personally I find all that a bit of a yawn. I just want my computer to do what it's told without complaining, which is what I like about this Mac. Anyway, there's nice sense of community around the whole Mac thing which is very welcoming.

Cheers