Ok, how bad would a used dual ~2.5GHz Power Mac G5 suck?

[SoundTheSurrender]

I think I'd get a G5 Mac for music production. I'm actually thinking about it still... I'm on a Macbook right now but I want dual 22 inch screens 🙁

 

[Stattlich]

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrenderI want dual 22 inch screens 🙁

They are a thing to behold. I can almost swing a couple of Cinema Display HD 23"ers I found on Craigslist, but they are double my $500 monitor budget alone. We'll see.

I think I'm set on a G5 now to tide me over for a year- glad we were all able to talk this out. 😛 Thanks for everyone's response to help me consider the options.

 

[Eug]

I have dual 24" screens. 24" iMac Core 2 Duo with nVidia 7600 GT and 24" Dell screen.

Much better value for my needs, and it feels significantly faster than a low-clocked dual G5 (to my surprise). (My friend had a dual G5 2.0, but then again he had a slow GPU.) Of course, you're not going to get a 24" iMac for $800.

 

[rivan]

I work on a dual 2.7 ghz G5 with 6G of ram, and as old as it is, it's just fine performance-wise. The only time I have any speed issues is on VERY (say, 1G+) large photoshop files. The drive in the machine is fairly old as well, so I think if I owned it a new raptor would solve that.

I usually have a lot going at once and it's not really bothered by it.

 

[timswim78]

If I had $800 and wanted a Mac, I would save another $150 and buy a refurbished 20" Aluminum iMac from Apple.com. It's speed is sweet, and it comes with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Also, it will run Snow Leopard 10.6, which is rumored to not work with PPC Mac's.

For $800, you could also get a used MacBook and an external monitor, a white Intel iMac, or a Mac mini (but I would wait to see if the spec's on them get upgraded).

 

[Kmax82]

For a stop gap to something more, I think the G5 is perfect. If you were planning on keeping it longer than a year, then I would warrant against it... but as it stands, dive into the G5, and you can always sell it on eBay down the road if you decide you don't actually like it.

 

[umrigar]

That G5 (specs/price) is a good deal. I'm speaking from a tech standpoint about power supply failures, logic board failures, and processor failures. Also some have reported liquid leaks from the cooling system.

Any Apple-specific component you have to replace on that machine is going to cost more than it's worth to fix. Hard drive, RAM, optical drive is a cheaper fix.

During the time I was a break & fix technician, I worked on far more G5s than G4s, and they were not out for as long. They are also a bitch to swap major components on. Processors that are replaced have to be recalibrated to the logic board using a special disc.

 

[themisfit610]

Yeah. You do NOT want to work on a G5 of any sort. I worked on plenty, and they all had frequent and maddening problems.

A hackintosh is incredibly easy to build, and if you pick the parts with half a brain, practically everything will work out of the box.

Plus you're not throwing money away on a dead platform. You can upgrade the hackintosh. You can't upgrade a G5 🙂

~MiSfit

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Yeah. You do NOT want to work on a G5 of any sort. I worked on plenty, and they all had frequent and maddening problems.

A hackintosh is incredibly easy to build, and if you pick the parts with half a brain, practically everything will work out of the box.

Plus you're not throwing money away on a dead platform. You can upgrade the hackintosh. You can't upgrade a G5 🙂

~MiSfit

For the record, at any time that Apple feels like it, they can drop in a chip of some sort that can be used to check for the validity of Apple hardware. If that happens, then Hackintosh is dead... just as dead as PPC is once Apple decides that they no longer want to support it.

If the guy doesn't want to go Hackintosh, then there is no reason to keep pushing it on to him. As I have mentioned before, my entry level MacBook is basically faster than all but the last few G5 PowerMacs, and although I did mention that for the amount that he is willing to spend he could get an incredible Hackintosh, with a minimal amount of work. But he doesn't want to do that and has said so a couple of times now.

 

[Zaap]

Originally posted by: TheStu

For the record, at any time that Apple feels like it, they can drop in a chip of some sort that can be used to check for the validity of Apple hardware. If that happens, then Hackintosh is dead...

For the record, so too would be every existing Mac. A bit of a moot point. Nothing will be supported forever. Ironically, the Hackintosh would probably be the machines to survive any attempt at hardware ID beyond what exists now- it already does.

Not pushing the Hackintosh on the OP, by the way.

 

[umrigar]

I've been doing some thinking about a hackintosh... troubleshooting would be a pain, considering what i know already about Apple hardware & software.
Does a hackintosh support booting into "target disk mode"? Cuz that's indispensable for Mac troubleshooting/drive imaging.

 

[Tyranicus]

I can't say for sure, since my Hackintosh doesn't have Firewire, which means I have no way to test it, but I'm illing to be you can't use a Hackintosh in target disk mode. I can say that in the 2+ years I've been a Mac user, I have never needed Target Disk Mode.

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: Eug
I have dual 24" screens. 24" iMac Core 2 Duo with nVidia 7600 GT and 24" Dell screen.

Much better value for my needs, and it feels significantly faster than a low-clocked dual G5 (to my surprise). (My friend had a dual G5 2.0, but then again he had a slow GPU.) Of course, you're not going to get a 24" iMac for $800.

Yea, I never understood the hate on the imac. Sure you can't 'upgrade' it. I realized that my upgrades basically built a new computer every year and sold my old one. The problem with this was that my windows/linux machines value was drastically lower then what I cost to build it. I'd build at 1400 and sell at like 700. When I look at imac prices, they hold value much better.

I personally went the macbook pro route, but I'm probably going to go the imac route in the future. I am not really using the macbook as much of a notebook, but mostly a desktop.

 

[Zaap]

Originally posted by: umrigar
Does a hackintosh support booting into "target disk mode"? Cuz that's indispensable for Mac troubleshooting/drive imaging.

Nope, no target disk mode- that is one really nice feature of a genuine Mac. It's a function of firmware, so far as I know it can't be done on a Hackintosh.

However, I wouldn't call it indispensable. Convenient, yes.

I can do any troubleshooting of my main install from a separate Leopard install on another hard drive in the same machine- haven't needed it yet however.

Any file transfer is pretty much covered with the usual combination of Ethernet and Firewire networking, as well as eSATA, from either Leopard install.

I haven't tried it yet, but drive imaging is apparently easily done using SuperDooper, and can even be scheduled right alongside TimeMachine.

In a nutshell, I haven't found maintenance and troubleshooting any more difficult (or needed in the first place) than with my real Macs.

 

[themisfit610]

Yeah, target disk mode is cool, but not essential. Nothing wrong with doing things the old fashioned way and pulling the drive, or booting to a LiveCD.

SuperDuper is a fantastic drive imaging program. Alltogether too easy!

~MiSfit