Lifetime of a Macs
If you were to buy a top of the line mac right at this moment. How long do you think it would last you? As in how long this will be your primary computer. We'll assume now is after MMNY and they just speed bumped everything by 200Mhz and gave them all +33Mhz faster bus speeds. TiBook, iBook(g3), PowerMac, iMac G4, and even the iPod.
Comments
I bought a top of the line Pismo in February 2000 (500 MHZ). I added another 256 RAM, OSX, etc, but that is all.
I plan on replacing it in 2003 or early 2004.
<strong>If you were to buy a top of the line mac right... How long do you think it would last you?</strong><hr></blockquote>
A top of the line Mac, I'd say at least 4 years, off course this is relative to what type of work you use it for. My Power Mac G4 350 MHz AGP Graphics, a bottom of the line G4 purchased in Feb 2000, is still my main computer. For the majority of my work, it's still fast enough with the exception of Adobe Illustrator 10.
Plus, if you spend $2000 now, you can spend the other $2000 two years from now and have TWO towers for that price, one of which is much more powerful than the computer you're thinking about buying for $4000 now! Or indeed, sell the old one in two years for $900 and spend only $1100 more to have a brand-new tower that's faster than the current $4000 model, thus having spent $3100 to have a computer that's almost as good for two years and better for the next two, instead of trying to stretch this current top of the line over four.
I can tell this is going to become my slogan, I just finished pointing it out in another thread.
Edit: "Memory" and "mammary" are not the same thing.
[ 06-27-2002: Message edited by: AllenChristopher ]</p>
However, since I want DVD playback, CD burning, LOTS of HD space, at least 16 MB VRAM, built in FireWire and USB, and faster iTunes encoding, I don't think it's worth getting more hard drive space since I'm going to replace it soon anyway.
So, if you buy a new Mac now, it'll be usable four years down the road, but you'll be REALLY hankering for a new one (depending on what you're willing to put up with). I happened to be on the tail end of the ADB/Serial/SCSI phase of Macs, so it would have been a bit better if I got a '99 model and kept it until '03.
[ 06-28-2002: Message edited by: Luca Rescigno ]</p>
I don't understand why you want to buy a computer that will barely get you through four years at $2,500, when you can buy one that's quite solid now for $1,200 and an iBook better than today's TiBook two years from now with the $1,300 you saved.
That's the same amount of money as buying one computer for four years, except that you get a 2004 iBook better than the best 2002 TiBook (especially with a faster bus) and essentially get a 2002 iBook to use until then for free. When you hit 2004, you will have purchased for $2,500 two computers, one faster than anything on the market today and one 2002 iBook. Heck, make somebody's 2004 birthday special.
It's a much more comfortable way to spend four years, in my opinion.
This post isn't aimed at changing your mind, Macasaurus. You may feel that you really need the screen space or 32 MB of VRAM now more than you will need what the iBooks will have two years from now, and I won't say that you don't know your needs. I'm mainly clarifying the equal money, two computers portion of my earlier post for other readers.
Oh, by the way, Bryce 5 runs faster on a G3 than a G4. Most things don't, but the G4 isn't all it's cracked up to be.