10-08-2006, 12:06 PM

I'm looking into buying a used mac to see how much I like it.What's the minimum system I should be looking at. looks like you can pick up a mac mini g4 1.25ghz for around 350-400 bucks. I just want to see if I could get used to the mac os, but I don't want a old POS that is to slow.I'm using a p4 3.4 dell xps gen 3 with 2 gigs of ram now.

10-08-2006, 12:48 PM

I was in a similar situation to you a few months back, after suffering from years of Windows use I decided I want to try out Mac OS X.

When I posted here, the advice I was given was to get a G4 PowerMac because it offers expandability. The Digital Audio version was the best to go for, it comes with a G4 450MHz or so processor, but you can get upgrades upto Dual G4 1.8GHz. And you can install loads of RAM, Superdrive, couple of fast hard drives (even SATA with a card), USB2, Airport Extreme (using a PCI card from Belkin etc) and a fast graphics card (AGP).

But, me being a student means it would take me a long time to save up and upgrade. Luckily, I was able to get a bargain G3 400MHz iMac for £10 from a guy who was getting rid of it. With an upgrade of 640mb RAM, 80GB HDD and Panther, it makes a usable machine for basic tasks. It does struggle with video, heavy web browsing and stuff, but for a simple system it is fine.

If you don't have a screen that you could use, you might want to consider an eMac or G4 iMac, which are pretty capable machines. For OS X, you ideally need 1GB RAM.

If you look on Apple's Refurb store, you can get a Core Solo Mac Mini 1.5GHz for $479 with 512mb RAM, 60GB HDD and a combo drive, airport extreme/bt and a remote, which seems quite good. I think I read somewhere that you can upgrade to a core duo yourself (but I may be wrong).
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL....8.1.5.1.0.5.0

I'm sure someone else would be able to give their opinion/advice too if there are other better options.