Apple Power Mac Advice

[mcarson]

Hey everyone,

I recently posted that I was looking to purchase a notebook for college but have changed my mind am now looking at Apple Power Mac's. My program that I will be attending is the Visual Design/Web Media program and it's pretty heavy in the multimedia area and they really prefer you to use a Macintosh. My question is, how much powerful of a Mac am I going to need to run programs like Adobe, Macromedia, Quark Express applications. I was looking on ebay at a Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver) 1.25 Ghz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD, ATI Radeon 9000 Video Card. Do you think that is sufficient? I don't know a huge amount about Macs but it seems like it would be just run for a student. Any advice or comments?

Thanks!

 

[Excelsior]

Yes, that is sufficient. Running those programs doesn't exactly need a G5, so that system would work just fine, espeically because it has 1GB ram.

 

[mcarson]

 

[NiKeFiDO]

do they provide the software? because purchasing those programs even w/ student discount sucks

 

[mcarson]

Originally posted by: NiKeFiDO
do they provide the software? because purchasing those programs even w/ student discount sucks

The one I was looking at didn't, no. I wish I knew the market for Apple computers. I'm not really sure what's a good price and what isn't. :/

 

[Excelsior]

You can often find used power macs..that people sell privately, that have those applications and more already installed.

 

[batmanuel]

Now might be a good time to buy a used PowerMac. Apple's announcement that they were giving up the PowerPC chips and going with Intel might destroy the value of the old PowerMacs, so you might actually be able to find the G4 and older G5 PowerMacs on eBay for some semi-sane prices pretty soon. It might be worth waiting a month or so for the PPC faithful to get to their "acceptance" phase of mourning the PPC hardware and grab some good deals on a single processor G5.

 

[imported_2x]

At work I have iMac G3's running that stuff, and they work OK. We have 1 G4 and it handles those programs pretty well.

 

[GratefullySaved]

Get a dual processor G4 with 1GB of RAM or even 2GB if you are going to do alot of Photoshop or video work on BIG files. The guideline for RAM with photoshop is multiply your image size (in MegaBytes) x5 to get the amount of RAM you should buy. So...if you work on 200MB files, multiply that x5 and you get 10000 MB, or 1GB in other words.

Used macs will not drop in price over the Intel announcement. They may even go up as the next computers might be a little less dependable or perceived that way since they'll be the first macs ever using this new architecture.

Check ebay for going rates on used macs. Check smalldog.com for fair prices on used G4 and G5 macs, although they can be a little high since they bundle warranties sometimes. Ebay will clue you in best overall.

You don't mention your budget, but if you can swing it, buy an Apple Cinema Display (can get good used 22" ones for $700...they used to sell for $4000 not that long ago and were worth it to a pro)

GS

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: GratefullySaved
Get a dual processor G4 with 1GB of RAM or even 2GB if you are going to do alot of Photoshop or video work on BIG files. The guideline for RAM with photoshop is multiply your image size (in MegaBytes) x5 to get the amount of RAM you should buy. So...if you work on 200MB files, multiply that x5 and you get 10000 MB, or 1GB in other words.

Used macs will not drop in price over the Intel announcement. They may even go up as the next computers might be a little less dependable or perceived that way since they'll be the first macs ever using this new architecture.

Check ebay for going rates on used macs. Check smalldog.com for fair prices on used G4 and G5 macs, although they can be a little high since they bundle warranties sometimes. Ebay will clue you in best overall.

You don't mention your budget, but if you can swing it, buy an Apple Cinema Display (can get good used 22" ones for $700...they used to sell for $4000 not that long ago and were worth it to a pro)

GS

He said NOTEBOOK, last I checked there arent dual cpu G4 notebooks. As for the specs, that should be more than enough to run those programs. Its not like you are charnging $300 an hour and every second counts

 

[Dennis Travis]

He said he WAS going after a NOTEBOOK but changed his mind. He wants a Powermac.

 

[teutonicknight]

Older G4's works fine for graphics, just make sure you have enough ram, 1-2 GBs. Also, try and get a dual processor unit, it will make things a lot smoother.