Mac Newbie buys G4 ibook

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Hi, new to mac-forums and mac's in general...always had a windows based PC. Anyway, for some reason I started to search for apple laptops today and picked up a 14" G4 ibook on ebay for under $200. Specs - 80gb HD, 1gb ram, OSX Tiger 10.4.2, all discs, cables, manual + box. Descriptions said minor cosmetic wear. Didn't have much time to research before bidding. Wanted to know if this was a good deal. Buying it for a 12 yr old to surf the net, play games, syn Ipod touch (will Itunes run on Tiger?), watch Netflix, DVD's etc. I've always had Win based PC's and know my way around a computer. Figured a mac would be a good starter computer. From what the description listed, the OS is a clean install and not a lot of added software included, just what originally came with the laptop. Would I need to buy any additional software to get started.

Any advice or suggestions would be great! Will any PC based software or games run on this??

Thanks,
 

pigoo3

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Anyway, for some reason I started to search for apple laptops today and picked up a 14" G4 ibook on ebay for under $200. Specs - 80gb HD, 1gb ram, OSX Tiger 10.4.2, all discs, cables, manual + box.

You didn't mention the most important spec....the cpu speed.;)

- Nick
 
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13.3" MacBook. 2GHz Core 2 Duo. 3GB DDR2 RAM. 320GB HDD. OSX (10.6.8)
I own a few iBook's (2 G3's (both running Tiger) and 1 G4 (running Tiger)) as well as my PowerBook G4 15" 1.67GHz running Leopard (10.5.8) as my main computer. They all run really well and have given me no trouble at all. iBook's and PowerBook's are still very useful and powerful for most things when upgraded. For example, I am still able to use Final Cut Pro 5 (Apple's professional video editing software) and Logic Pro 8 (Audio editing and mixing), and they run just fine but they are a little out of date but that's the highest versions they can hold. Web browsers are becoming limited on PowerPC based Mac's. The new versions of Safari and Firefox do not support PowerPC computers anymore. I still use Firefox 3.6.16 and it still runs fine with no trouble. Google Chrome is a no right from the start because Chrome has never supported PowerPC to begin with. If you want a browser that is current, the only one to my knowledge would be Camino. If you want to use the Abode CS suite, CS5 is not supported. The highest CS version these computers can hold is CS4. It's still very good, as I use it and many of my tech friends still use CS4 as well. Yes, iTunes does work on Tiger, but if you want to use iTunes 10, you'll have to upgrade to Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) in order to do so, in fact Leopard is the highest O/S that these machines can hold, as Snow Leopard and Lion require an Intel based Mac. But Leopard runs very smoothly and lots of people still run it. If iLife is not included (GarageBand, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD), then you may want to buy the iLife DVD and install it. I use iLife '08 but '09 will also work on this machine. NOTE: if you use any of these versions, iMovie is not supported. There are forums that tells you how to hack iMovie into your computer, but it's slow.) If your iBook has a DVD drive (which the 1.42GHz iBooks came standard with a SuperDrive), you can watch movies. Most newer games don't work on PowerPC computers, but older version work just fine (Exp: StartCraft II does not run, but the original StarCraft works very well.) Any website that uses Adobe Flash is gonna be sluggish (YouTube) due to the awful preference of the PowerPC version of Adobe Flash. YouTube videos still play, but will have a tendency to lag if the resolution is high. Lowering to 360p and waiting till the video is done loading will make videos play just fine. Some 480p video's play, but most them don't play too well. It also helps a little to switch YouTube into HTML5 mode. That way it just uses JavaScript and it does a little better, but not by much. You can even buy a Webcam for these computers. Most webcams are just Plug and Play on Mac. I use a Logitech C160M that has a great picture and frame rate, and I able to use Photo Booth and Skype with no issues. The new version of Skype does not run on PowerPC computers, but the old version still runs very well. All in all, I think it's a good deal on a nice computer as I use a PowerPC Mac on the daily and as long as your fine using older software and games then you should be happy with your purchase.
 

dtravis7


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I own the 12" version of that machine. It's still ok for basic use but a bit slow for todays work and for sure too slow for HD and some Flash videos at higher resolutions. I use 240p on You Tube and the videos play smooth.

No PC software will work on a power pc mac. An Intel Mac like a Macbook would be better for todays use and also will run Windows along with OSX natively and run your PC apps.
 
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It's ok for everyday things but you need an intel processor for netflix.
 
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It's ok for everyday things but you need an intel processor for netflix.

Thank you all for the feedback.

I had read that Front Row with a plug in called understudy can be used to access Netflix and hulu on non intel mac processors. Is this right? Will version 1.3 work for this?
 
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I am not positive on that one. If it does work, it's more in likely gonna be painfully slow and laggy.
 

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