G4 500 or so....

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hey Guys,



I wanted to get a 2nd mac for my setup running current OS X. Anyone have any thoughts on how a G4 500 or so will run?? I havent run OS X on a machine that slow. I just wanted it for basic email and surfing....



Any comments??



Thanks,



Adam

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    I own a g4 533 with Jaguar inside : it's perfect for my web brosing and my mailing.



    The G4 500 should be perfect for what you want to do with it.
  • Reply 2 of 12
    we have a old 450mhz (g4) here at the office I tried panther on and it made a huge improvement actually. It has 384 megs of ram too. I think for itunes and web browsing a 500 would be just fine.
  • Reply 3 of 12
    anyone know about soundtrack and its cpu load?? might run that too...



    I use my main G4 for music production...but want to run reason and soundtrack possibly on this machine..
  • Reply 4 of 12
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    Mine is a 350 MGz G4 (AGP) with Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card and 704 RAM running Panther just fine for doing what you describe.
  • Reply 5 of 12
    I used to have a Powerbook G4 500.



    Worked great.
  • Reply 6 of 12
    ryaxnbryaxnb Posts: 583member
    Heck... for a long time (until sometime in the middle of this year) Dan Knight of Low End Mac was doing his web production work on a 400Mhz PowerBook G4!
  • Reply 7 of 12
    I run a dual 450 with 512 MB RAM as my primary production machine and it gets the job done quite nicely. It doesn't impress in the speed department, however, it is a very diligent machine. I've used far more powerful (windows) machines and they seem to come to a point where they can'T handle any more and consequently slow down dramatically. I have never had that happen on my ol' 450.

    I'm curious how jag or panther runs on a fast machine. I've ordered a 15" 1.25 Powerbook since I need something for the train and plane trips...
  • Reply 8 of 12
    othelloothello Posts: 1,054member
    still use a PM 300mhz (no agp, so no qe) as my second machine



    runs jag ok actually. lags a bit but not too bad. hopefully panther will improve it.



    but for mail, and browsing its fine
  • Reply 9 of 12
    Basically any G4 will run OS X fine, because of the AltiVec processes. I wouldn't recommend OS X on a G3 slower than 600Mhz. It's just really slow. My G3 600 iMac runs it fast, but still not as fast as a 500 G4
  • Reply 10 of 12
    G4 Cube 450mhz here. 384mb of ram. Runs like a dream. I can run photoshop, Final cut pro 3, iMovie, iTunes, mail, safari, warcraft III (although the graphics suck). A 500mhz G4 is extremely capable of handling Jaguar or Panther. I got Jaguar the day it came out, same with Panther. Runs extremely well, not a problem in the world. Sure, there are faster computers out there, but this one is going strong. Go for it, that thing will handle OS X like it's its job. Oh...wait, it is...
  • Reply 11 of 12
    o and ao and a Posts: 579member
    AGP G4 400mhz with 1.2 gigs of ram. Jaguar runs great can do everything i need. iTunes browsing emailing some work with final cut express and photoshop. Its great. Also have panther running on my secondary machine before i install it on this one...g3 imac dv and it runs just fine. great for tunes browsing and emailing and i do some small photoshop work on it.



    I was thinking of buying an upgrade card for my agp graphics g4? Is it worht it? Saw an 800mhz g4 card for 199 I'm tempted...
  • Reply 12 of 12
    ryaxnbryaxnb Posts: 583member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by O and A

    AGP G4 400mhz with 1.2 gigs of ram. Jaguar runs great can do everything i need. iTunes browsing emailing some work with final cut express and photoshop. Its great. Also have panther running on my secondary machine before i install it on this one...g3 imac dv and it runs just fine. great for tunes browsing and emailing and i do some small photoshop work on it.



    I was thinking of buying an upgrade card for my agp graphics g4? Is it worht it? Saw an 800mhz g4 card for 199 I'm tempted...




    With Final cut and photoshop, probably. However, if you have less then 512MB RAM, then upgrade RAM first and see how you like it.
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