Up Grading a Mac

Ok I am thinking about buying a mac off of E-bay, but most of the macs I see on E-bay that are in my price range have like 10 gig hard drives. Now I have never owned a Mac before,(I have used them but never owned) I do have 3 PC at home and I do have some knowledge on PC's. Once I buy one of the Mac's I am looking at, I would like to upgreade it. I would like to add a bigger hard drive, but keep the one that it comes with for the OS, I would also like to add memory to it. Is it hard to do this with a Mac? Could I use the same type of hard drive that I would use on my PC? Another question I have is can you file share between a Mac and a PC using like a flash stick? Could I make something in photoshop on a pc and then open it fine and use it fine on a Mac or the other way around could I make something on a Mac and open it on my PC? My PC's at home are on a network could I add a Mac to my network and see it fine and use it on the network, like with file sharing and using the printer? I know there are a lot of questions but I am a newbe.. Thanks a head of time for any help you could give me..

We need to know more to really help you. What Mac are you thinking of buying off Ebay? Old iMac? G3 B&W? G4 Tower?

If you run OSX, networking with a PC will be as easy as can be. If it's an old system with OS9 or earlier, you will have problems.

Some Macs are easier to upgrade than others and with some you can upgrade more parts of the system. Let us know what Mac you are thinking of getting and we can better help you. Do try to get a Mac either With OSX or one where you can purchase OSX and install it later. Otherwise yes to all your questions but depending on which Mac you end up with.

3 of the Mac's I am lookin at on E-bay are G4's, 2 of the G4's have OS 9 and one G4 has OS 10.4 Tiger. And 2 other Mac's I am looking at are G3's one of the G3's has OS 9 and the other has OS 9.1 I do not know if that is the same OS.

More or less. The changes between 9, 9.1 and 9.2 are minimal; and all depending on the machine can be upgraded to 9.2.

I would recommend at least the G4s.

What kind of G4 Macs are they? iMac? Power Mac? eMac?

Vicky

1 G4 is:

Item Specifics - Apple Desktops
Product Family: PowerMac
Memory (RAM): 512 MB
Processor Type: PowerPC G4
Hard Drive Capacity: 60 GB
Processor Speed: 533 MHz
Operating System: Mac OS 10.4, Tiger
Processor Configuration: Dual
Screen Size: None
Condition: Used

Another G4 is:

Item Specifics - Apple Desktops
Product Family: PowerMac
Memory (RAM): 256 MB
Processor Type: PowerPC G4
Hard Drive Capacity: 40 GB
Processor Speed: 533 MHz
Operating System: Mac OS 9
Processor Configuration: Single
Screen Size: 17 inches
Condition: Used

And the last G4 is:

Product Family: PowerMac
Memory (RAM): 512 MB
Processor Type: PowerPC G4
Hard Drive Capacity: 10 GB
Processor Speed: 600 MHz
Operating System: Mac OS 9
Processor Configuration: Single
Screen Size: None
Condition: Used

I would personally aim for the dual processor 533MHz Power Mac G4.

Yes you can use the same hard drives as PCs, ATA-IDE ones.

Yes you can network them and so long as the files you wish to open on the PC which are saved on the Mac an accessed via the network will open, say a Word document on the Mac and opening it from one of your PCs.


For sharing the printer, you might be better of researching getting OS X for it, as though OS 9 is fine, most new apps and recent apps aren't available in OS 9 versions.

I haven't had any issues of sharing a printer hooked up to a PC via my PowerBook on OS X 10.4 (Tiger).

The memory is PC-133 SDRAM, and can tgake a maximum of 1.5GB

Vicky

OMG Thank you so much you have helped a lot.

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