"new" g4 powermac

[lilmacuser]

My trusty iMac G3 finally completely died on me, and I'm sick of scouring ebay for parts. At any rate, with my junior year of college approaching very quickly, I purchased a simple 450mhz powermac G4.
Any issues I need to be aware of? I plan on using my 120gb harddrive in the machine with the 20gb harddrive it comes with. The memory I have collected from the iMac (slot-loading) is compatible, with a max of 1.5gb.
Any super upgrades that aren't too pricey that you think are worthwhile? Comments, anyone?

[powermac]

What type of monitor you plan to use ?

[eric2006]

I used to have an AGP/450 G4, and I put lots of upgrades into it. I bought a Sonnet 1 GHz upgrade, which was nice, but I found it to be buggy, and you might as well get a different machine for the price of it. Maxing the memory is cheap, and worth it. I would look into a new video card, especially if you have the AGP model. I found that upgrading the video card greatly sped up the graphic-intensive OS X UI (at least, compared to what the card was designed for, under OS 9). I used it with the matching graphite CRT, which was enormous. I use a 19-inch LCD with my PowerBook, and I'll never use a CRT again. An LCD would be a good investment as well, as they can easily be had for under $200.

[lilmacuser]

I just acquired a small lcd (I live in a small college apartment), I think I'm going to use a pci slot to add more 2.0 usb ports. I'll look into graphics card, thanks guys.

[Tronman]

I just bought a Giga-Designs 1.54GHz single G4 upgrade, they're $259 new, and the 1.4Ghz version can be had for $229. Very much worth it! Photoshop CS2 now runs great. Plus the upgrade can go with you if you decide to get a prettier G4 such as a Quicksilver, with the faster 133MHz bus.

Sometimes the lower end 1.2GHz G4 upgrades go on sale for sub-$200 and even that would be hugely worth it, the difference in even basic web browsing and email type things is enormous. That and the video card, for sure :-)