Move To New Mac?

S

Sparrowhawk

Registered
Greetings All,
I need a general piece of advice, and welcome input from all of you kind ladies and gentlemen. I currently use an eMac operating Tiger, and have used this machine for about seven years now. That's probably a long time to operate any computer--I get messages telling me to upgrade plugins and YouTube just plain crashes on the rare occasions when I try to go to that site. I don't have an urgent need to upgrade to a modern Mac, but it seems to me--and please correct me if I'm wrong--that this Mac, that has served me well, is probably on the verge of a catastrophic crash or some similar breakdown. So tell me: has this Mac outlived itself and should I make the transition to a new Mac? And will my old software (there's not much--my principle software is a word processor, and some DVD burning programs) make the transition, or should I update these programs as well? I should point out that my primary uses for the Mac is writing, photos, internet functions and scanning. Any and all comments would be appreciated.
Sincerely, Sparrowhawk
 
The eMac of seven years ago has probably reached the end of its "upgrade" life. It's a computer with the PowerPC chipset so you cannot use the latest system software. If you want to do some linking of other stuff like a phone with iTunes you may find that you cannot.

Only you can say whether you need to upgrade, but expecting a failure is probably not one of them. If the computer does all you want to, then keep it.

Rather than change the computer, I would spend the money on getting a separate external hard disc (or two!!) and making sure you have a good automatic backup system.
 
On consideration, you're right about getting a modest hard drive. True, I will have to format it for the Tiger OS, but I'm sure I can get some support on that score. Thanks for your common sense advice.
 
If you are going to make a bootable backup, or just install Tiger on an external hard drive -
keep in mind that your eMac will not boot to a USB drive.
It will only boot to an internal drive, or to an external using Firewire.
 
Thank you for your additional comments. I'm a little confused, however, not being a technical person. I was under the impression that the external hard drive (a small Passport, which will have to be reformated via tech support) would be all I needed for saving my important files (not many) in case of a catastrophic crash, in which case I would upload the external drive's contents into a new Mac. Wouldn't this upload to a new Mac?
 
Yes, that will work.
I was just reminding you that if you want to BOOT (start up) to your old Mac with that external, then it would need to be a Firewire connection.
One of the USB-only drives is OK, as long as you don't need to boot your eMac from that external.

If your Passport drive is this one - you will be OK in any event, because it has BOTH USB, and Firewire ports.
http://store.westerndigital.com/sto...d.13092300/catid.55288100/categoryID.57007800
 
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