My Official "Help me buy a Mac" Thread

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PC graphic cards will not work in a Mac, unless it is a ATI Radeon 9600 PC/Mac Pro 256 memory card. Whether or not a decent deal, if she runs nicely the answer is yes. Ask for the Tiger install discs. The memory I doubt will work from his description of it and be aware this model is most particularly about using PC2100 Mac compatible memory.

It will take 4x512MB and be quite respectable and of course, f you get leopard later it will run on it reasonably well. Graphics card should not get that hot they are too hot to handle. Problem with cards with fan units is they have a fairy high failure rate which cooks the card.

Search eBay and such for a Mac Pro ATI Radeon 9000 or 9600 as they do not have fan units and run cool and silent.

Hey....Been seeing that red sand storm over in Sydney..Thats just unreal looking.. like a mars landscape.
 

pigoo3

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I finally bought one!

So here comes the big question: Do you think it was a decent deal? Mac2Sell listed this system as valued at $160

The Mac2Sell guide to used Macs - second-hand Mac worth

And everythingmac.com had it valued at $300-$450 (Why?)

Apple Power Macintosh G4 867 DP (MDD) Specs (Mirrored Drive Doors - M8787LL/A) @ EveryMac.com

What do you think? How will the performance be? I should get it in two weeks.

Congrats on purchasing that computer!...although I thought your budget was like $100-$120 bucks...you spent $160 on this one ($130 + $30 shipping).

As far as was it a good deal. Using the Mac2Sell value of $160 (the everythingmac.com value is way wrong...you could buy a G5 for $300-$450)...I would say that you basically paid about what it is worth.

Not a great deal...not a bad deal.

Congrats again,

- Nick
 
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I'd say you got a solid deal, man. That's pretty cheap, and I feel like Mac2Sell tends to value machines lower than what people end up paying for them in the market.

I'd buy that machine at the price you got, and I don't even need it. As for bus speeds, yea, 133MHz is a slow bus speed, but what can you do? I remember around 2004 when I bought my first mac (well, my first personal mac, I had always had macs they were just owned by my family) I went all out and got the dual 2GHz PPC G5 rev C... The bus speed on that was 1GHz, which smoked pretty much everything else that was out in the mac line by 4 or 5 times. Pretty much, that computer would still be formidable today (if I hadn't fried the logic board).

When I bought my current aluminum MacBook, I was looking to replace my power mac G5, and basically that's all I did. I got faster RAM with it and more graphics memory, but even 5 years later my processor speed and bus speed were still the same. So, I mean that machine was cutting edge at the time, this machine is more middle of the road, but still. The machine you bought is nothing to scoff at. It should run and run well for quite a while. Watching flash videos online I guarantee will be choppy, but what can you do. (You'd think that codec writers would make flash less CPU intensive... it used to work just fine with slower processors, now you have to have like 1.5GHz at least for it to not even be choppy... what the heck is up with that?) It just seems very inefficient the way they do it. It hogs CPU usage like a mofo, heats up your gear, and I imagine it can't be good for your cpu to be putting it through its paces all the time just to watch a video, which you could watch in quicktime at a much less taxing pace to the cpu...

Sorry, I got off topic there. I like to rant about flash player being a pain in the butt and too CPU intensive, since it used to run fine on my fiancee's 1.25GHz eMac G4 and now it's all choppy with the latest incarnations.

Anyway, congrats on a solid machine! I'm envious! May it serve you well for a long time!
 
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Congrats on purchasing that computer!...although I thought your budget was like $100-$120 bucks...you spent $160 on this one ($130 + $30 shipping).

As far as was it a good deal. Using the Mac2Sell value of $160 (the everythingmac.com value is way wrong...you could buy a G5 for $300-$450)...I would say that you basically paid about what it is worth.

Not a great deal...not a bad deal.

Congrats again,

- Nick

Thanks, actually it is $130, he mentioned in his listing that if you use buy it now for $130 you get free shipping. So really it is $130. I can also afford it because I do not have to shell out money for a USB keyboard as I anticipated, just the mouse and DVI-VGA adapter. SO I saved about $10 by not buying a used USB keyboard.

I'd say you got a solid deal, man. That's pretty cheap, and I feel like Mac2Sell tends to value machines lower than what people end up paying for them in the market.

I'd buy that machine at the price you got, and I don't even need it. As for bus speeds, yea, 133MHz is a slow bus speed, but what can you do? I remember around 2004 when I bought my first mac (well, my first personal mac, I had always had macs they were just owned by my family) I went all out and got the dual 2GHz PPC G5 rev C... The bus speed on that was 1GHz, which smoked pretty much everything else that was out in the mac line by 4 or 5 times. Pretty much, that computer would still be formidable today (if I hadn't fried the logic board).

When I bought my current aluminum MacBook, I was looking to replace my power mac G5, and basically that's all I did. I got faster RAM with it and more graphics memory, but even 5 years later my processor speed and bus speed were still the same. So, I mean that machine was cutting edge at the time, this machine is more middle of the road, but still. The machine you bought is nothing to scoff at. It should run and run well for quite a while. Watching flash videos online I guarantee will be choppy, but what can you do. (You'd think that codec writers would make flash less CPU intensive... it used to work just fine with slower processors, now you have to have like 1.5GHz at least for it to not even be choppy... what the heck is up with that?) It just seems very inefficient the way they do it. It hogs CPU usage like a mofo, heats up your gear, and I imagine it can't be good for your cpu to be putting it through its paces all the time just to watch a video, which you could watch in quicktime at a much less taxing pace to the cpu...

Sorry, I got off topic there. I like to rant about flash player being a pain in the butt and too CPU intensive, since it used to run fine on my fiancee's 1.25GHz eMac G4 and now it's all choppy with the latest incarnations.

Anyway, congrats on a solid machine! I'm envious! May it serve you well for a long time!

Thanks, I'm not sure about how well the G4 will play videos, but I have a 2.4GHz penitum 4 that can play youtube in full 720p even though you technically need a dual core. As long as the power mac is as good as my celeron 2.4 (Which according to some benchmark test and a few cross-comparisons it is in terms of multimedia instructions, by a full 17%!) then I should be fine with plain youtube vids, but most likely I will keep that to my PC anyway. I bought the power mac for certain software such as garageband, iMovie, Final Cut, and Anime Studio that my PC cannot run.
 
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Harry, my Mint QS has no speaker grill and every pic I have seen of the QS shows the speaker exposed like that.

Also, what happened with that dood you met and his mac? Did he give up?

That is the way it appears on almost every website I view it on.

The guy I met about the other mac just sent me an email today saying the hard drive had some bad sectors and other than that it was just too hot for the computer that day. He said nothing else is damaged, and that he would be replacing the HD with another 80GB one. He offered me the same price for it but I turned it down, not only because there could possibly be more wrong with it but also because I had just purchased the power mac G4 12 hours beforehand and I am not one to retract my bids (I had that happen in an Item I was selling once, not a fun thing to deal with.)

So what are any potential problems with particular power mac g4? Anything specific I should check once I get it (Other than whether or not it works :p)?
 

pigoo3

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FREE SHIPPING!/No shipping ( :p That didn't work out :p )

In your post above you said this...which I assumed related to your e-Bay purchase.

But hey...if you got it for $130...that's much better!

Congrats again,

- Nick
 
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In your post above you said this...which I assumed related to your e-Bay purchase.

But hey...if you got it for $130...that's much better!

Congrats again,

- Nick

Oh, yea, I was commenting on the fact that I got free shipping instead of being able to pick up the mac as soon as I bought it :p and how getting free shipping is not the way I planned to receive the item, even though it is good :). The only problem is I need to wait 4-9 business days for delivery (That could mean up to two weeks!) I never do good waiting, which is why the shipping business did not turn out the way I wanted, because I did not want to wait :p

It made sense when I typed it at least...
 
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I received the tracking number and the UPS site says the PC should be here by 9/30/09, only 4 days to wait! The mouse I ordered off of ebay should also arrive on that day, and the computer supposedly comes with the dvi to vga adapter so that is $15 I do not have to spend! I should be able to use the computer as soon as I get it in that case.
 
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I finally received it! I am typing this on my new powermac G4. Not that I have it, I can also give you the graphics card, it is an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, better than the GeForce 4MX I thought I was going to get.

Hooking this thing up was a major pain. The tower was fine, but the keyboard wire is so short I had to switch the mac with my PC which was set up on the left because the usb ports on the mac are on the right. I got the mouse on Monday, so I tried it out on my PC and knew that would work.

So I started it up, and the fans blew really loud before settling down, It sounded almost like a radiator fan in your car when you pop the hood. Other than that, once it quiets down it is about as loud as my PC was, which is tolerable as long as I don't leave it on overnight while I am sleeping. This is much faster than my gateway, which struggles even under ubuntu 9.04, but comes very close to even with my Dell Dimension 4600. The Dell probably beats this g4 in terms of graphics with a 9600 PRO and RAM with 1.25GB, but performance in everything but graphics is the same, the G4 plays DVDs fine, and youtube is good as long as I don't try HQ or HD, so that's good too.

Here are the hardware specs to remind everyone before I post the startup times:

Apple Powermac G4 MDD - Model M8570
Dual 867MHz processors w/ 1MB L3 Cache per processor
ATI Radeon 9000 PRO
80Gig ATA Hard Drive
512MB RAM, 3 slots free
OS X Leopard 10.5.6 (I am in the process of updating it to 10.5.8 now)
AirPort Card installed
Superdrive installed (Pioneer DVD-RW is a superdrive, right?)
Apparently has USB 1.22


So here are the startup times:

Power on: 0s
Chime: 4s
Logo: 25s
Desktop Image: 55s
Finder: 56s

It is approximately twice as fast starting up as my windows computer is, and it is running Leopard, which if I remember correctly is the most taxing OS I can run on this mac, seeing as snow leopard is intel-only.


So far, the performance seems to be fine. I have no idea how much good the extra processor does in normal desktop performance, but this seems to do the job. The graphics card does well too, all of the animations are smooth, the dock gets a little jumpy if I turn on magnification, but I do not use that anyway so it's no big deal. Screensaver is completely smooth (tried Apple News and Flurry). AirPort works, currently has 2/5 signal strength from a router that is through 3 walls and across the house about 200 feet or so away (My PC router usually shows a 40-50% with 6-36Mbps range, but does sometimes lose the connection). So far there have been no connection issues as of the past hour. Apps installed include iTunes 8, Final Cut Pro 3, Garageband 2, help me out on this one and tell me what it is, but there is a program called toast titanium, and DVD Studio Pro, iMove, and iDVD among others. I currently have about 4 programs open (Firefox, Garageband 2, System Profiler, Updater which is installing updates) and there is very little lag if at all, except when I am doing all this and recording something in garageband.

So, what do you think? For a grand total of $137 ($130 for Tower and keyboard, $7 for Pro Mouse) is it a good deal? I like it so far, but then again I would like anything that is better than my old gateway is.
 

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Sounds great! Good deal.

If you can down the road, post a picture of your MDD!

If you need any help at all, ask away.
 
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Sounds great! Good deal.

If you can down the road, post a picture of your MDD!

If you need any help at all, ask away.

UPDATE: one of the RAM cards the guy included was a 512Mb PC2700 card that works on this mac, so now it has 1GB. That was easy, it was the only upgrade I was considering at all.

Here are two pics I just took. One is of the inside, and one of the outside, it is sitting next to my Linux PC. I have to keep the two together because I only have the one monitor between the two. My Windows Dell is in another room, it is a family PC.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r74/pokeman89/09-30-09_2034.jpg
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r74/pokeman89/09-30-09_2033.jpg

And yes, I use two tray tables as a computer desk :p
 

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