Finally replacing my beloved G4, and need some advice

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Bought the Snow Leopard disk to upgrade my G4, only to discover that because it's a PowerPC (not Intel-based) it cannot be done.... so, time to bite the bullet, and get something that isn't 10 years old - and I'm already experiencing sticker shock. It seems that an iMac will meet my needs; I'm NOT a gamer, but I do use Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, and some wretched Microsoft programs like Excel and Word (only to communicate with the lesser beings). Music is taking up a lot of space on my G4, along with photos galore. I'm not really interested in downloading movies, just the occasional YouTube moment.

My question is - do I really need to get more than 2.5 GhZ, and can I safely buy a refurbished machine? Are there any particular years that were more problematic than others? I've been poking around on various websites, and see machines for sale from 2009 - 2011. The iPad or a laptop isn't of interest. My other consideration is that I have an HP LaserJet 8100 printer, and it was more than a bit of a pain to get it to play nice with the G4 - will I be faced with additional issues when I get an iMac?

Any responses will be greatly appreciated - tried to make sure I was using appropriate sentence structure, and checked my spelling. Please keep in mind that I'm NOT a 'super-user', but I think I have enough knowledge (or can research it on the web) to keep myself out of trouble, but if the response is too technical, I'll be bugging you with stupid questions (not to me, but you might think so!!)
Thanks in advance!
 

dtravis7


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Your Mac's Specs
MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
I did a search for your HP LaserJet 8100 and it took me to this URL. Says driver for 10.6 and even 10.7 Lion, so you should be good to go.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
15in i7 MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 500GB HD
You should be able to safely buy any machine from the past 2-3 years. I'd check Apple's refurb section, sometimes you can find a really good deal, plus it comes with a 1 year warranty that can be bumped to 3 with AppleCare.
 
C

chas_m

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Since you're obviously the type of person who likes to hold onto their machine FAR longer than they should :) -- not doing your bit to stimulate the economy et al -- I'd recommend you buy a new or very recent model iMac. The quality level on them is phenomenal (not a random opinion -- plenty of independent, PC-magazine type quality surveys confirm this).

For future-proofing purposes I'd suggest a Core iX-chipped iMac over an Intel Core 2 Duo.

I think your bigger issue is "is your software ready for the switch?" Have you been keeping your MS Office, Quark and Adobe stuff up to date? If not, they're very likely to all need updating. You'll need to be running *at least* MS Office 2008 (I'd strongly recommend 2011, or just switching to the iWork suite), and at least CS3 of the Adobe stuff (CS6 is right around the corner, might was well jump to that). I'm not sure what version of Quark you'll need, but again you'll likely need to go with the latest. That could all prove a bit expensive if done all at once.
 

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