Here's my advice. Since your not employed right now, and you have some extra money, get a nice LCD monitor like everyone else suggested. Find a job, and save save save, as much as you can. When the next revision of PowerMacs come out and you have a large sum of money, you won't feel as money pinched when deciding on getting maybe one of the high end systems, you may have 3000 saved up, and getting a $2500 powermac won't seem to bad. Plus some extra for more ram, video etc...
Next revision will probably be some where around
Dual 2.2Ghz 1.1Ghz FSB $ 1999
Dual 2.5Ghz 1.25Ghz $2499
Dual 3.0Ghz 1.5Ghz $2999
Plus hopefully PCIe.
Any of those models will last you a whole lot of time. Any dual processor machine will last alittle longer than a single processor for sure.
Ex:
I have a PowerMac 9600/200MP that benchmarks at 421MFLOPS from Altivec Fractal. My iMac G3 600Mhz only gets around 533MFLOPS. For being 7 years apart in production, that's pretty good performance. Granted you need software to take advantage of the dual procs. Most new software is now days.
On a Dual 2Ghz I'd say you could get 7 years doing any kind of work. There's so much power there, 20GB/s FSB bandwidth, Serial ATA,
(2) 64-bit processors at 2Ghz, something like 10GFLOPS. There's alot of power there. Plus expandibility.
This is actually a pretty good thread, I've decided to wait until next revision or so, (see my sig) before getting a G5. My 9600 serves my well.
I've been using a dual 500 MHz G4 system now for 4 years, and the only thing that it can't do is run the absolute latest games.
-Ender
I have the same machine and it does work flawlessly. I'm a professional designer though and needed to upgrade this year. Instead of getting rid of my "old" Dual, I now use it as a File server and RIP for my PostScript Printer. I also host PHP/SQL websites and DNS services on it. I expect to get at least another 4 years out of it for those tasks.
I always have a certain sentimental attachment to my Macs and have trouble kicking them to the curb. I actually just gave my 9600 MP, the first dual PowerMac, to the Salvation Army. But any machine that's capable of running OS X will be useful in some capacity for quite some time to come.
...Granted you need software to take advantage of the dual procs. Most new software is now days.
well, what about smp in osx, even single proc apps can work better on a 2 proc unit, particularly when multitasking, imagine running 4 apps all on a dual proc rig, the os and maybe the first two apps will run on cpu 1 and the remaining apps will run on cpu 2 (or however you assign the procs, which I assume you can on a multi-cpu osx box) thus giveing an over al proformance boost.
about windows longevity, I agree that pcs do have a shorter life than do macs BUT the rreason so many people replace their rigs every 12-20 months is because of their utter ignorance to bitrot, mac users dont have crapware that people download because "aawww it looked so cute", mac users also tend to be a savier crowd in terms of general maintanance, that is keeping the computer/computer area clean and free of dust.
that is why if someone asks my advice on upgradeing a 3 year old windows box, and all they do is surf, mail, and word/exel, I tell them to do a series of things first:
1: run spybot/adaware to clean the junkware up
2: delete all unused apps or media files.
3: de-fragment
4: if that doesnt give you the "out of the box new" speed that you once had, re-install windows.
5: (if nessesary) upgrade ram
you would be surprised how manny people think that the computer hardware slows down with age, but cureing bit rot can easily double the usefull life of a computer.
I type this from a box on which I do some photoshop and light audio editing, a 4 year old 766mhz CELERON on win xp with 40 gb hdd and 384 mb ram.
Comments
Next revision will probably be some where around
Dual 2.2Ghz 1.1Ghz FSB $ 1999
Dual 2.5Ghz 1.25Ghz $2499
Dual 3.0Ghz 1.5Ghz $2999
Plus hopefully PCIe.
Any of those models will last you a whole lot of time. Any dual processor machine will last alittle longer than a single processor for sure.
Ex:
I have a PowerMac 9600/200MP that benchmarks at 421MFLOPS from Altivec Fractal. My iMac G3 600Mhz only gets around 533MFLOPS. For being 7 years apart in production, that's pretty good performance. Granted you need software to take advantage of the dual procs. Most new software is now days.
On a Dual 2Ghz I'd say you could get 7 years doing any kind of work. There's so much power there, 20GB/s FSB bandwidth, Serial ATA,
(2) 64-bit processors at 2Ghz, something like 10GFLOPS. There's alot of power there. Plus expandibility.
This is actually a pretty good thread, I've decided to wait until next revision or so, (see my sig) before getting a G5. My 9600 serves my well.
Originally posted by Ender
Howdy,
I've been using a dual 500 MHz G4 system now for 4 years, and the only thing that it can't do is run the absolute latest games.
-Ender
I have the same machine and it does work flawlessly. I'm a professional designer though and needed to upgrade this year. Instead of getting rid of my "old" Dual, I now use it as a File server and RIP for my PostScript Printer. I also host PHP/SQL websites and DNS services on it. I expect to get at least another 4 years out of it for those tasks.
I always have a certain sentimental attachment to my Macs and have trouble kicking them to the curb. I actually just gave my 9600 MP, the first dual PowerMac, to the Salvation Army. But any machine that's capable of running OS X will be useful in some capacity for quite some time to come.
Originally posted by Altivec_2.0
...Granted you need software to take advantage of the dual procs. Most new software is now days.
well, what about smp in osx, even single proc apps can work better on a 2 proc unit, particularly when multitasking, imagine running 4 apps all on a dual proc rig, the os and maybe the first two apps will run on cpu 1 and the remaining apps will run on cpu 2 (or however you assign the procs, which I assume you can on a multi-cpu osx box) thus giveing an over al proformance boost.
that is why if someone asks my advice on upgradeing a 3 year old windows box, and all they do is surf, mail, and word/exel, I tell them to do a series of things first:
1: run spybot/adaware to clean the junkware up
2: delete all unused apps or media files.
3: de-fragment
4: if that doesnt give you the "out of the box new" speed that you once had, re-install windows.
5: (if nessesary) upgrade ram
you would be surprised how manny people think that the computer hardware slows down with age, but cureing bit rot can easily double the usefull life of a computer.
I type this from a box on which I do some photoshop and light audio editing, a 4 year old 766mhz CELERON on win xp with 40 gb hdd and 384 mb ram.