CapMac Forums

Vivid Contrast · Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

At home I have a PowerMac G4 with 450Mhz. At work we have PowerMac G4s with 900 Mhz and Dual 1Ghz. I had no idea the G4 family went this high and I must say I've been blow away by their performance.

Just curious, does anyone know of any good online stores, or even actual physical stores that sell new/used past models of PowerMacs? I'd like to upgrade to something a little snappier than 450 Mhz, and while a brand new G5 is out of my budget, I thought perhaps a new/used higher end G4 would be the perfect fit.

Thanks,
Vivid

Glenn Chase · Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 11:46 am Post subject: purchasing a used G4

I would look very hard at a new Mac mini to see if it might fit your needs before investing in a used G4 tower. A new Mac mini is going to come with Tiger, iLife, and a warranty, not to mention built in Bluetooth and AirPort functionality. Starting at 499.00 it's very hard to beat those features.

If you need the expansion slots and/or extra drive space you can try online merchants like SmallDog and PowerMax that sell used Macs. You can also consider buying an accelerator card to speed up your current G4. I've considered this for my 450 MHz G4, but can't justify the cost vs. a new Mac mini.

Glenn

Scott · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 57 Location: San Antonio, TX

I have an AGP G4 that I upgraded about 2 - 2 1/2 years ago and am still amazed at the speed and stability of that machine. I went with a 1.4 GHz upgrade card from OWC and have been very happy with it. The upgrade is rated at 1.4 but actually runs stable in my machine at 1.5GHz. OWC sells their line of upgrades (the Mercury Extreme) as well as upgrades from Power Logic, Sonnet and Newer Technologies. As an example of what they currently have in stock, you can get a 1.2GHz Mercury Extreme for $249, half of what a new Mini costs Smile

I see they now have upgrades up to 2.0 GHz for these machines and Dual upgrades up to 1.8 GHz as well. WOW!!!

I can vouch for the true plug-and-play nature of these upgrades. They're easy to install and they just work. No drivers or tricks necessary. Install, boot, DONE.

I can also vouch for OWC's 3 year warranty. About 6 months ago my machine would not boot period. After much troubleshooting I discovered it was the upgrade card. I swapped back in the old CPU and sent the upgrade back to OWC. In about a week I had a replacement and was back up and running at full speed. The CPU was about a year and a half old at the time and they gave me no hassle whatsoever.

While I do agree with Glenn that you need to consider cost vs. other things like the Mini, you also need to consider the time and trouble that you will need to invest in transferring everything over to a new machine. Sometimes we don't consider our own time investment in those equations and we really do need to.

Just my experience but it has been a good one.

Scott
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