ds store.ggggrrrrrrrrr

[eric2006]

The mini is the "low-end" mac now, and it uses a laptop-style hard drive and RAM. The iMac is a step up from it, but you get much, much more. The mini could outperform your G4, though. The thing about upgrade cards is that it will be faster, but still light-years behind the intel macs. You'd be throwing money into an architecture that Apple has abandoned.

[chiliman321]

Originally Posted by eric2006

The mini is the "low-end" mac now, and it uses a laptop-style hard drive and RAM. The iMac is a step up from it, but you get much, much more. The mini could outperform your G4, though. The thing about upgrade cards is that it will be faster, but still light-years behind the intel macs. You'd be throwing money into an architecture that Apple has abandoned.

just curious here...but isnt your most powerful Mac 733 lightyears behind also?.....curious here....the apple store folks tell me this is the very best machine to upgrade and STAY with the times..(667 DA) because of its 133MHZ buss ..it WILL still run everything....well with exceptions to windows.......but i have a Pentium 4 2.6ghz that works windows very well........and at the cost of a new machine....this is a good choice for my learning adventure......i played with a mini mac and to me...there just wasnt much difference in speed.....leastwise not that much...i really am curious about your most powerfull mac..why dont you have a quad?....

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by chiliman321

just curious here...but isnt your most powerful Mac 733 lightyears behind also?.....curious here....the apple store folks tell me this is the very best machine to upgrade and STAY with the times..(667 DA) because of its 133MHZ buss ..it WILL still run everything....well with exceptions to windows.......but i have a Pentium 4 2.6ghz that works windows very well........and at the cost of a new machine....this is a good choice for my learning adventure......i played with a mini mac and to me...there just wasnt much difference in speed.....leastwise not that much...i really am curious about your most powerfull mac..why dont you have a quad?....

One of the things that Mac users have had and PC users don't usually experience is the longevity of their computers. Macs have a much longer staying value and Mac OS X actually optimizes much better with every release, making it a bit faster than it was before. On the Windows side, each major release always ends up running slower on older hardware, meaning that at some point you're required to either replace a part of the machine or the entire machine itself. Right now, a G3-based iMac can run Tiger decently with enough memory (it's an old machine, so you can only push so much out of it, but adding more memory does bring new life to that iMac). Plus, G4s have been out for quite a long time now beginning with the first generation Power Mac G4s, and Leopard surely will support them. At the time, Pentium III computers were out when the first Power Mac G4 was released. I doubt that those will be able to run Vista even using the Classic interface. This is the reason many Mac users don't find the need to upgrade their hardware as often.....they have a much more lasting value.

Case in point, I still have a 13-year-old Macintosh Quadra 650 (pre-PowerPC) that's still very useful.....it's actually running as a web server at the moment using MacHTTP. Many others are even doing this with older Mac hardware than this. That says a lot about the Mac and it's operating system, even back in those days.

About the only thing that would make an old Windows PC last longer than the usual duration is if that PC is running an older version of Windows (which is basically obsoleted at this point) or using an open source OS like Linux or Free/Open/NetBSD. Still, this limits you to a 386 computer at the very least and only with a command shell. Even an old 68000 compact Mac can do a lot more using an older GUI interface.

As for eric2006's powerful Mac, consider that it was from an ad that appeared when it first came out. Look underneath is and you'll see the date from whence it as published (Oct. 4, 1999).