Apple computer guys, need your advice.

I still have my old slot-loading G3 iMac that I bought off Craigslist last year for $120. It's running System 10.2.8 and it works great for everything I need to do, aside from the fact that for the past month and a half, the new Tool "10,000 Days" CD has been stuck in the CD-ROM drive.

Dave
http://www.roadsters.com/

 

viruses and spyware are OS dependent not processor. The viresus are writtne for microsoft windows not intel x86 processors. There are no known viruses or spyware programs in the wild for OS X. There are proof of concepts, but they have been addressed and even so they required you to enter your admin password to install. Anyone with half a brain would question having to do that. And for you wmv problem get flip4mac. Done deal no more windows media problems.

 

Man, you're about 8 screws from getting that CD out. I should know, I can strip an iMac G3 Slot-Load completely down to ir's bare component parts in less than 20 minutes.

Where I was working, we'd get several palettes at a time of them in, stacked in 4 or 5 layers of 4 - 5 iMacs each. part of what I did was to find the good ones and get them ready for resasle, and to take the bad ones and make more good ones out of them.

~Jason

 

I have a Dual G4 tower at home... got it right at 6 years ago, and I'm just now getting ready to get a new one (planning on a 24" iMac). I have upgraded the hard drive for more space, and upped the video card a couple years ago. (Had it packed full of RAM pretty much from the get-go.) Before you think I do piddly stuff with it, I do all my stuff for print: hi-rez Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. I doubt you could do all this with a 6-year old PC! At least not productively.

My 2.5 yr old Dual G5 still runs real good at work.

If you are used to Windows, you might have a bit of a time converting your ways of thinking to the Mac way, but once ou do, you'll find Windows very frustrating to use.

You'll find that any digital camera made by any company you've heard of (including HP) in the last 5-6 years will plug in and just work (as will most printers, USB mice, et. al.) with no installation of driver software and no restart.

If you want a laptop, the new Mac Books they announced last week with the Intel Core 2 Duo (stupid name) look to be an awesome value.

 

While we're sorta on the subject, does anybody have any experience with the refurbs from the Apple store? They have a pretty decent deal on the 24" iMac (for now... they come and go...). The refurbs have the same warranty, but has anyone had any trouble with them? If they've been gone through, then it could be that they might be more consistent than the ones coming straight out of the factory.

 

I've gotten more than a few refurbs over the years with no problems at all. Also if you have a local Apple store ask what they have on "refresh". That's more or less open box stuff, same deal, discount with full warranty...

 

I hope you realize the computer term "refurbished" means nothing....it's a highly technical way of saying "used"

 

Thanks, zman. There are 3 Apple stores in the Dallas area, so I'll call them all when I get ready to purchase.

squirrel, yes, I do know that. The fine print indicates that they are units that were damaged when received by the end user, then fixed. Some are also trade show display units that were checked out & repackaged.

 

Man, I should know about the term "refurbished", having worked in the Refurb Mac & iPod industry for years. You're exactly right - sometimes we'd dust off a battery, put it on the shelf, and call it "refurbished". Other stuff we'd go completely through, inside and out.

As for the "refresh" deal, all Apple stores have a table in their stockrooms where they put open-box returns. They call the stuff "refreshed" items. In the case of "refreshed" computers, they're wiped clean, restored, and re-boxed before they sit them on there.

Anyway, once a month the Apple stores have what they call a "Fire Sale", where they bring out all that stuff and sell it, although if you ask all the "refresh" stuff is available for sale at anytime.

And yes, I've even worked for Apple. OWC too. You could say I've been around.

~Jason

 

Refresh, sounds good to me.

 

I put 10.4 on mine, and added a 512 ram for a whopping 640. The only problems I have had in 7 years has been a lack of a burner and pirat- er unlicens- I mean freeware asking for validation. But we have ways around that. Muhuwahahah!

 

If you want a laptop, get a MacBook to save some $. The basic difference between a MacBook & MacBook Pro is the memory. Apple charges $400 for memory which you can get for less than $200 and it's a no-brainer to install. Also, look into the student discount. When my wife bought hers, she also got a good deal on an iPod. I've been a MS user for years; I like the Mac, but am still a novice at it.

 

Werd.

Just sign up here:
http://www.apple.com/education/store/

They never even freakin' check to see if you're a student or not, but they give you the discount (you DO have to buy it online, and the shipping is usually free).

And the memory thing? Always order with the minimum amount of memory. Get more here: http://www.coastmemory.com and install it.

But I'll warn you, if you ever need to send it in for anything, swap your memory out for the stuff it shipped with. Apple service centers have a form letter that gets kicked out if something's wrong with the computer and aftermarket memory is present that blames the problem (whatever it is) on said memory and the computer was is sent back. It's pretty stupid. I've heard of extreme cases of PowerBook G4 hinges being legitimately jacked-up, but because there was aftermarked, user-installed RAM, it was sent back (you guessed it) with the form letter, claiming that the RAM was the problem.

No shit.

~Jason

 

Actually the difference is the Mac Book Pro has a dedicated video memory and a better card. The Mac Book shares the memory for the video with the processor. That's the biggest difference.

 

Still not sure on the Mac Mini.


They are smaller,and less money,but what is the down side ?
There is ALWAYS a downside,when something is less expensive.



Thanks.



Ian

 

Well, I'm no Mac tech, but I believe the "down side" would be that it is less expandable as far as hardware goes, and it doesn't come with any peripherals, no monitor, no keyboard, etc. Works nicely for those that just want to upgrade an existing computer though, and already have a monitor and keyboard and such. I plan on getting a mini in the near future.

 

Right on target, there.

The processor, and video RAM is all soldered down. You'll never go any faster or have better video - the only thing you can do is put more memory in it, add a bigger hard drive (they use laptop drives, by the way), or a faster DVD burner in addition to ordering Bluetooth and Airport options and installing them. But that's it.

They're great and all, don't get me wrong. Just don't expect them to still be able to run top-of-the-line software after about about 5 or 6 years.

~Jason

 

This is the situation with ANY computer, mac, mini, maxi, pc, or whatever. The architecture of the hardware changes enough every few years that you just can't keep up with simple upgrades...plan on buying a new motherboard, memory, processor, video card, and hard drive every 2-3 years....in other words, a new computer. And probably a new OS too.

So you might as well not spend to much on whatever computer you buy, unless you enjoy throwing away money. $300 is about my limit.

 

The Video RAM is shared with the processor so getting as much RAM as possible will make the biggest -performance difference. You can also expand them with firewire and usb add ons. They even make them so they stack very neatly with the mini...

 

Squirrel-- this is where a lot of people don't think of the added value of a Mac. A 2-3 year old PC is considered old and on it's way to being replaced by most home users and corporate alike. We have several Macs in our GRAPHICS department that are 5+ years old with nothing but a RAM upgrade and an OS upgrade (and that was just a few months ago) since they came off the brown truck. None of these are scheduled for replacement for at least another 9-12 months. These are machines being used by real people on a daily basis, not sitting in a corner as a print server or anything. These Macs get shut down or rebooted about once a week or even less. I personally do all the Mac IT here, and that amounts to about 30 minutes/month of my time.

In comparison, the 3 Windows boxes in that department get upgraded/replaced about every 15-18 months. And they get rebooted a couple times a day.

 

I know guys using 400 mhz windows computers too....and I just recently upgraded from a 233mhz to a 700 mhz laptop....but they are indeed way out of date.

If the job the graphics guys are doing can be done with a 5 year old computer, that's great. My guess is they're not editing video.

 

No. Just graphics for print. Hi-rez, tho.


Wow... 5 pages on a traditional hot rods board... who woulda thought...

 

And you're not editing video on a 700Mhz laptop, at least not with any speed.

 

Actually, I see a strong connection between the relative simplicity of a traditional hot rod and a Mac. I would even suspect that there may be a higher than average ratio of Mac users to PC users on this board. Or not.

 

nope, but since I only paid $50 for it I'm not too worried...as I only need to edit still images.

 

That's not necessarily true. My wife runs a 500MHz G4 PowerBook with 8MB of video RAM and 2 512MB SODIMMS. She's running the latest iLife, Office, OS X 10.4.8 as well as the latest Quark and Adobe Suite with no problems. It'll even edit video. The only upgrades were a hard drive and RAM.

In fact, I have a 10-year-old Mac (coming up on it in December) that runs all the latest stuff as well, but then again it's got a 32MB video card, a 450MHz processor, a 1GB of RAM and some 7200 RPM hard drives that'll run circles around my wife's 500MHz PowerBook. Of course, I've put a video card, RAM and the drives in there, but those weren't very much.

One of the great things about the platform is the symmetry between hardware and the fact that most of it uses extremely similar (if not the same) drivers. This allows you to take a Mac laptop, boot it with the "T" key held down, then plug it into a Mac desktop and select the laptop's drive as the boot disk. Of course, this is only between Macs with the same kind of processor - Intel to Intel, G4 to G4, G3 to G4.

So what you said is true to an extent, but not as prevalent with the Mac platform.

~Jason

 

now there you go, hotrodding computers...at last we're getting a bit on topic...



this is what I was using up until about a year ago, an IBM XT (1980s) upgraded with a cheap motherboard with a 1ghz p3, with appropriate video card, ram, hd, etc.

I've looked into the old macs I have, and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to put newer stuff in them...although to be fair the 1ghz setup in the XT is about as high as you can go without doing any metal work. It's pretty much a bolt in, even uses the original power supply. The older style mini AT boards fit in the old XT cases easily. Using a newer ATX board is a lot of work.

 

Pros and cons (pardon the pun) law firms prefer Apple.... something about they are just sick and tired of dealing with viruses and spyware in their emails.

For me... 14 years I've been on Macs and have marveled at the fact I've never seen a virus or a spyware. PC's give me migranes, Macs give me Joy Joy Joy.

Glad to meet all you fellow Apple heads. I'll be heading towards a dual processor in the future and now know where to come to get the low down. Thanks for all the tips and links too.

 

Hey - I have an IMMACULATE XT! They're pretty awesome, and I LOVE the old-style keyboard.

In fact, I love it so much, I almost bought one of these the other day:
http://www.pckeyboard.com/

It's the original XT keyboard only USB! ClicketyClicketyClicketyClicketyClicketyClicketyClickety!!!

~Jason

 

16 years I've been on PCs and never had a virus or spyware.

strange....