Moving On From G3 iBook - What Should I Buy Now?

I just found a buyer for my G3 800MHz, 640MB RAM, 30GB hard drive iBook and am completely confused about what to replace it with.

I thought it would just be a matter of choosing either a laptop (MacBook) or desktop (iMac) but on doing some reading I see that it's a bit more complicated than that! I suppose my real question is: should I go for a G5 or one of the new Intel models?

I know that Rosetta needs a lot more RAM to run PowerPC apps on the Intel machines (about 2-3x more, I heard) so if I were to get one then I would definitely be getting an extra 512MB to get the RAM up to 1GB. But maybe that's not even necessary if I'm not using PowerPC apps all the time; I do use Photoshop, Microsoft Office and Dreamweaver but not on a daily basis. What do you chaps think?

Maybe I should get a G5 and wait until all the problems with the new Intels are sorted out? Are we still on Rev A?

I say go for Intel. Slowly, Apple is switching all of it's focus to Intel, and even though PPC will not be gone for a while, it will eventually be gone.

BTW got a copy of Office, and MS Word runs just fine with 512 RAM- I find that SOME PPC apps run fine under Rosetta, others lag so much it's not even funny.

I believe we are still on Rev A, but if You're getting an iMac, there have been no problems with the 17". Mine works just fine.

My wife and I just switched to Macs and we have a macbook and mac mini. We love them both and the Intel processors are very fast.

I say since you had an old g3, this shows you like to keep your computers for a while. so my recommendation would be to buy the best computer that you can afford with the most ram, etc, that way you will be able to hold onto it for a long time down the road.

Thanks for the advice. I'm still umming and ahhing about the Intels but I have decided to get one of the 17" iMacs.

intel

hi

since you're jumping two generations to a g5 intel imac

the leap will feel like something awesome coming from a 3 . we have a g3 g4

and g5 the new macbook just made macs faster and faster and

faster. truly superb machine.

regards

I decided to go with the Intel instead of G5 as a lot of people have said that they are likely to be more "futureproof". This morning I put in an order for the 17" iMac and I'll see how I go with 512MB RAM for now. I can't wait for it to arrive!