Should I wait for a 970 or buy an eMac now?
Right now I'm on an iBook and feeling significantly cramped (iBook 600 with Rage 8MB video).
Is it worth it to wait for a 970? I will not have the money available again right away, so I'd hate to blow it on an eMac when a 970 could be right around the corner.
Any advice?
Is it worth it to wait for a 970? I will not have the money available again right away, so I'd hate to blow it on an eMac when a 970 could be right around the corner.
Any advice?
Comments
Teddy
However, you'd probably feel just as cramped on the eMac or get a headache from the low refresh rate you get at max resolution.
When this reversion will come is another question, but if you can wait it might be worth it.
I'm not waiting for a 970 in an eMac. I have enough money to buy a dual 867 NOW, but I don't want to get soaked in 6 months, so I was thinking about an eMac as a stopgap solution.
BUT....if I can hold out and wait for a 970 Dual Processor, I'd be willing to pay $2,500-$3,000 for it. And if it's cheaper, I'm definitely getting an Apple Display.
But can I wait? Should I? The agony!
You will have to buy a screen, but if you consider to buy a PPC 970, you will need also a screen.
I use to think that i will buy a PPC 970 as soon he will arrive, but i think that late april i am going to order a dual 1,43 ghz powermac. It will replace my g3 333 (who sucks : cannot upgrade it to mac OS 9 :mad; for a weird reason) and i think he will be a lot, lot faster.
<strong>The eMac has a much larger screen and I've found out that I don't need the portability after all. The eMac also has a G4 and is upgradable to 1G of RAM.
BUT....if I can hold out and wait for a 970 Dual Processor, I'd be willing to pay $2,500-$3,000 for it. And if it's cheaper, I'm definitely getting an Apple Display.
But can I wait? Should I? The agony!</strong><hr></blockquote>
That is a very optimistic price for a dual 970 in my opinion. Apple may even create a higher-end line for the 970 until it realizes economies of scale and can introduce it into the remainder of the mac lineup.
Conceivably it could be 12 - 18 months before we see a 970 in that price range.
Is that really justified? It's not the speed jump that's important, it's the cost of production. If Apple can make a reasonably priced dual 970, they would do well to price it in a range that switchers who want something faster than a pentium 4 (or whatever Intel has cooking at that time) could be comfortable buying. The single processors won't necessarily smash the P4s the way a dual would. Not only that, but it would sort of waste all the time and effort that Apple has put into making OS X dual processor compatible if only a few people can take advantage of that built in power...AND it now makes all the dual processor code that Adobe and others have built into their software marginal. Can Apple really expect third party software companies to cater to the dual system and then drop it now that there's a decent PPC chip that will run in singles? That might frazzle some already tenuous relationships.
It *is* Apple, though--they've been stupid on this count before.
<strong>I will buy a 1 Ghz Powermac, it cost 1500 $, but will kick the ass of any emac (better HD, better Mobo, better video card, L3 cache, PCI slots, firewire 800, gigabit ethernet ...). This computer will let you wait for 12-18 months, at this moment you will have very good PPC 970 at a good prize. The first PPC 970 could be expansive.
You will have to buy a screen, but if you consider to buy a PPC 970, you will need also a screen.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'd say an even better move would be to buy one of the dual 867's that are still available. With these, you can still boot into OS 9, you get dual processors, and this machine can be modified to run as a dual 1GHz with 167MHz bus and the faster memory that you use when you get a dual 1.25 or dual 1.42.
Duals rule!
I suggest that you hold out for the 970, especially if you're willing to spend $2,500-$3,000. Otherwise, you could buy a used Powermac or eMac and sell them when the 970 hits the market.
i will NEVER buy a computer where i can't upgrade either the processor or the video card over time. the only exception is a laptop, and i had better be out and about with it for at least 5 days a week (school or work) before paying almost 100% more for half the speeds, no upgradeability, etc.
that being said, remember that even though an emac has a lot going for it compared to your ibook, it is still the runt of the apple litter right now (ibooks notwithstanding, and i see them moving to 700 and 800 MHz G4's with their next revision to be on par with the eMac... hell, they may as well just rename it the eBook, but i guess there are trademark problems there). going by MHz alone, the emac is 1/4 the speed of the high-end machine. and the next upgrade -- even if it's just another g4 -- will dwarf that emac quickly.
now, having said THAT, buy whatever you can afford to get the work you need to get done right now. that is the best advice i can give. if you can't afford a tower, then buy what you can afford, and invest in peripherals that can migrate up to a new computer in the future.some piece of hardware always comes out around april/may, to give them something to talk about for wwdc, and then summer...
there's my two cents.
[ 02-23-2003: Message edited by: rok ]</p>