Price?

01-03-2003 4:14pm #1

Hey,

What kind of price would I be talking about for picking up a decent Mac. I'd like to start playing around with OSX, and curious what kinda price i'd have to pay to get it running decently.

- Kevin, wishing there was an x86 port.

pa · 01-03-2003 7:02pm

Originally posted by p
Hey,

What kind of price would I be talking about for picking up a decent Mac. I'd like to start playing around with OSX, and curious what kinda price i'd have to pay to get it running decently.
port.

Finding a second-hand tower going cheap would be a good way, although the owners of second-hand Macs tend to ask ridiculous prices for them.

Any new Mac you buy now from Apple will handle OS X excellently, so long as you add plenty of RAM. It's the key to a pleasant OS X experience.

The base eMac goes for 1200 Euro. It's not great value for the price. If you think a laptop might be something you'd have a use for, the iBooks are superb machines and better value (I bought one myself last month).

RicardoSmith · 01-03-2003 7:09pm

Depends what you mean by running decently. Its not really very quick unless you have one of the latest machines. Probably something like the eMac is the cheapest/quickest Mac you can buy new. See here http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/irl
As you can see you'd be spending €1000-1500.

Alternatively you could buy an older 2nd hand mac and use it to play around with OSX. It would be slow but it would work. You could put something together for about €500 I reckon.

There were some exdemo G4 towers recently mentioned on ClubMac.ie for about 1000-1200 and someone was selling older G3's on the for sale forum here a while ago aswell. The later are quite handy as they have IDE and take PC66/100 ram so you could source cheap PC upgrades and use them.

If I was buying new I think I'd look long at hard at a new iBook though. Theres a 2nd hand one for sale on the for sale forum here too!

Dr_Teeth · 01-03-2003 8:35pm

If you're interested in OSX then you will have to buy a machine with a G4 processor and a graphics card that supports quartz extreme (a radeon or nvidia geforce basically). If you don't you'll be a sad panda.

The eMac is a good option in this regard, or one of the newer flatscreen iMacs. Check out Apple's Ireland store online or one of the Irish Apple dealers websites.

Teeth.

pa · 01-03-2003 9:33pm

Originally posted by Dr_Teeth
If you're interested in OSX then you will have to buy a machine with a G4 processor and a graphics card that supports quartz extreme (a radeon or nvidia geforce basically). If you don't you'll be a sad panda.

If you have a Quartz-extreme capable graphics card and plenty of RAM, you don't need a G4. Fast G3s provide excellent OS X performance.

RicardoSmith · 02-03-2003 1:12am

I've also heard that while the initial release of OSX didn't support the onboard ATI cards of older machines properly in that Quartz wasn't accelerated by them, especially on the older G3's, the latest update now supports them properly and it runs a lot faster than it did before. Though I'm no OSX guru so this is something to consider and check out before buying a machine.

Dr_Teeth · 02-03-2003 7:51pm

What G3 machines have a radeon or geforce built-in?

Teeth.

RicardoSmith · 02-03-2003 8:25pm

Originally posted by Dr_Teeth
What G3 machines have a radeon or geforce built-in?
Teeth.

None of them. They had 128 Rage Pro's built in on some of them. But theres a shed load of different flavours of Rage chipsets. The're all rubbish at 3D though.

Son of Blam · 27-03-2003 3:24pm

Originally posted by Dr_Teeth
What G3 machines have a radeon or geforce built-in?

Teeth.

http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=tam&page=portable&subpage=ibook_16vram&skin=specs

My 700Mhz iBook has an ATI Mobility Radeon card with 16MB of ram on it.

RicardoSmith · 27-03-2003 3:30pm

Well you learn something everyday. Didn't think any of the older books had them. Is it a 7500 class gfx or the original Radeon?

Son of Blam · 27-03-2003 3:39pm

No, the one in my iBook is a "Radeon M6", where as the 800Mhz iBooks that came out after mine had the "Radeon M7" gfx card, with 32mb of ram, I'm guessing the M7 is the 7500 one.

RicardoSmith · 27-03-2003 6:08pm

So still not great for 3D, though light years ahead of the rage cards. Good to know though. Ta.

Paradys · 08-04-2003 9:19am

I got my hands on a G3 (blue and white) 300Mhz a few weeks ago and installed OS X. I'm very impressed since I've always worked on PCs and never had the bottle or cash to try a MAC.

I bought the Mac so I could use it as a music only machine for recording. I'm afraid it's a bit slow to handle all my all my requirements. So I'm thinking about selling it. I'm not fully decided but I could be convinced.

It's a fine machine.

Dr_Teeth · 08-04-2003 11:20am

I know what you mean, I have an iBook with a G3 500 and 384MB of memory and I've been unhappy with its speed for some time now. I'll certainly buy another apple for my next laptop, but It'll have to be a big beefy G4 with hardware accelerated graphics to keep me happy.

Teeth.

sisob · 08-04-2003 2:46pm

I bought the Mac so I could use it as a music only machine for recording. I'm afraid it's a bit slow to handle all my all my requirements. So I'm thinking about selling it. I'm not fully decided but I could be convinced.

It's a fine machine. [/B]

how much? I'm keeping my eye open for something cheep to
paly with osx on..

Paradys · 09-04-2003 9:43am

To be honest it's just a thought in the back of my head and I haven't really thought it through. I paid €600 for it with no keyboard, memory or monitor and OS8.something.

So I ordered some RAM for it & i managed to get a keyboard & had to shell out for OSX.

Any ideas?

Price?

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