Hey guys...some switcher questions for you.

Please bear with me here folks...
After whacking the hd for probably the hundredth time on my emachines T3422 due to viruses and other such bugs, I am making the switch.
My brother gave me an older 800mhz G4 Powermac with which to start. It needs a little work, i.e. new dual drive, possibly new HD, some memory, etc. Here is my question...I'm currently running an Intel Celeron D 346 processor (3.06GHz clock speed, 256 KB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB). Obviously a 3.06GHz processor is substantially faster than an 800MHz processor, but I've been told that comparing a celeron to a powerpc processor is apples to oranges. How much of a noticable difference will this be for me? What might be a comparable processor speed? Now, to let you in on a little of what I expect from this machine? Not much. I surf the web, stream some video, update and store my itunes/ipods (none of which are over 8gb). I mean I'm not storing a massive library of music, or rendering video or anything...just a basic system. Additionally, I have seen some 15-17" imac flowerpots online with 700MHz-1GHz processors for super cheap...I wonder if I would be better off just buying something like this that doesn't need any work.
Any help would be appreciated. I'm sort of in the dark here.
Thanks a ton! Oh, and if anyone has an old system they want to part with I'd be interested in talking too!
Thank you!
-mjk

There's really no way to answer your question off the cuff. You need to run your new (at least new to you) G4 Powermac and draw your own conclusions based on your experience with the Windows machine.

And as far as buying another Mac machine from eBay or somewhere else, why don't you wait until you get used to the one you have first?

Also some info about a PPC: A PowerPC chip is a RISC chip and as such can operate at a lower speed than a CISC chip (Intel Celeron) but handle processes just as fast or faster. So it depends....

You be the judge. ;D

Regards.

Subjectively, I've found PPC processors to perform better than x86 CPUs but you experience may differ. Do as chscag suggested and give it a try first.

That said, an 800mhz G4 is not going to perform anywhere near as well as a 3Ghz+ x86 processor. I may believe that PPC CPUs perform better at the same speeds (this could be an OS thing though) but that large of a difference will be greatly noticeable in favour of the x86.