Upgrade to a better eMac? Or hold on to what I have?

I have been using an eMac for years. It's my main computer and I really have no complaints. I don't really play games much, so it's not a big deal to me to have the latest and greatest hardware, I just like owning something that works and is reliable. However, this thing is definitely showing it's age in some areas, even some websites and video decoding from the internet is a real struggle for it... I have used 3rd party software to tone down a lot of the eye candy in the OS, and as a result it's a very responsive machine that gets ordinary work done with little complaint from me. It does fine editing video and running photoshop and handling a lot of my typical multitasking.

I have owned this thing for years, I'm thinking since late 2003.
The only important specs are as follows:

1GHZ G4
(upgraded to) 1GB PC133
Radeon 7500 32MB graphics
USB "1.0" (or 1.1, or whatever, it doesn't have USB 2.0)
Firewire 400
10/100 ethernet

etc etc....

It has an extra video out (VGA) and it was originally sold as a "mirroring only" feature, but a quick software hack unlocks the video cards native duel monitor capability and i have been running dual monitors for years. Probably never go back to only having 1 monitor on a computer.

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On the one hand, I'm thinking maybe I should hold out and wait until I can get a used or refurbished intel mac for a reasonable price. I'd certainly like the idea of having 2 processors as that would really help smooth things out when i get a lot of intensive threads (not forum threads!, lol) running

I was doing some research, and discovered that a later model eMac (than mine) was made with specs like this:

1.42GHZ G4
DDR333 memory interface
Radeon 9600 64MB
USB 2.0

rest is pretty much the same.

I have found a source for this model online for $250, which seems like a pretty good deal. I'm really debating what to do here. There are some major advantages to that slightly newer eMac. The DDR memory interface combined with the MUCH better video card. The USB 2.0 won't help me much, but it would make my printing and picture transfers from SD cards a bit faster (allowing those devices to operate at their maximum speed). The Radeon 7500 that is in mine, has one major drawback, it does not provide acceleration of the Mac OS user interface, instead, my processor is left to handle it all. With the activity monitor up, just moving the mouse around or dragging a window, or doing anything that is appearing graphically on the screen, eats up huge chunks of processing time, spiking the thing out to 100% in many instances. My feeling is that, if the video card were handling a larger portion of the user interface processes, then the machine would probably feel much zippier, and have a lot more processor cycles available to dedicate to rendering web pages and such. I have read that the 9600 was actually a fairly respectable video card in it's day, and would adequately handle just about any game on the market at the time it was released and in the years it was sold. I wonder if maybe I had a little more oomf in that department, if I would be playing a few more games I have also done some research and discovered that the same software hack that will unlock my current machine to run duel monitors will work on that later model eMac. A HUGE plus for the eMac

Here's my big dilemma (2 fold)
1. I could hold out for a mac-mini with lot more processing power, but I am actually questioning whether or not the on-board video on the mini (GMA950intel) is as good as that 9600 in that eMac I am eyeing. if it's not, then I'm really not gaining anything important. The other issue is, I don't think there is any hack available to make the mac-mini intel machines duel monitor capable. (just video mirroring). Which would really be a step backward for me.
2. Apple moved to intel over a year ago, the instruction language is totally different, they have been porting over their software, and everyone else around them has been doing the same. While many programs are still available for both intel and PPC instruction sets, the end result is undeniable, eventually, a PPC based machine, (like the eMac G4) will be in a position of not being able to participate in the modern mainstream of what's going on. At some point, support for the older instruction set will be dropped by so many software writers that the machine will be forced into obsolete-ism.

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So, I'm just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on what I should do here. I'm at this dilemma and just really wanted to vent where I am at and share what's on my mind lately regarding my computational status

oh- BTW, please don't tell me to build a PC. I have nothing against the windows option that is of great significance. Older macs hold their value for a reason and it isn't based in falsehood. I know that I could build a much more powerful PC tower for less (I have done it before on several occasions) but i just am not interested in running windows at this time and don't have time to get a linux distro actually working properly, lol. I ran windows 2000 alongside this emac for the first several years of it's life in a home built PC tower and it was a fine machine. Something hardware wise gave up the ghost, I set it aside with the intention of foxing it later, and started using the eMac more and more. Suddenly I found myself having no desire to repair the windows machine (even though it had far more impressive "guts"). The eMac covered all my bases and did so with less headaches so here I am

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Oh, one last thing- if any of you out there have a Mac-mini with the intel graphics, or a late model eMac with the Radeon 9600 I would love to hear your impressions.

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Thank You for listening to my long rant,

Eric

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I don't have the Mac Mini, but I do have the MacBook with the same Intel integrated graphics. For what I do, it's more than sufficient. It runs two monitors (the main notebook display and an external monitor with high enough resolution), plays videos, and even runs most games in Mac OS X (heck, I nowadays play FPS more often than I did in my Windows days. Mostly since I found an open source FPS that all my buddies can run on Windows and Linux). I can watch videos in Windows XP running in a virtual machine without stutter.

Though you should wait and see what Apple releases today (Oct 14).

Hmmm, more laptops without DVD/RW drives.....

They pioneered the movement towards them, not they are pioneering a movement away from them...

This company has an ego problem, lol. They are just operating on the "whatever we do is the new standard" premise. Their duel graphics chip-set on the new pro is probably about the dumbest thing I have seen, lol. Why not just have the 1 faster chip running? Maybe leaving behind some space for, idduno, maybe a DVD drive, or maybe a little more battery so it can get the full 5 hours runtime on the faster chip, lol.

The new Macbook looks like a strange stepping stone between where we are now in laptop graphics performance, and an attempt to get to where we want to go tomorrow, in a roundabout way. lol..

oh well... new models means the price of old comes down for me!

mdocod said:

Hmmm, more laptops without DVD/RW drives.....

Click to expand...

Ummm, what?

All the current MacBooks (except the Air) come with a dual-layer DVD writer (the update today has removed the last entry level MacBook without it, and replaced it with one that has at a cheaper price). And re. the Air: Considering how often I use the drive while at work (i.e., never ... ok, once every three months or so), I wouldn't mind not logging it around all the time...

No blu-ray, though, since, as Steve Jobs puts it, it's "a bag of hurt" (as far as licensing is concerned).

Hi, just some personal observations from a house with 2 macbooks.

Even though I am more a PC win (and Suse Linux) fan, we do have 2 macbooks in the house.

Mactop a- Intel core duo, 2 gig ram, older OS (Tiger ?) purchased Aug 2006

Mactop b - Intel core 2 duo, 2 gig ram, new OS (some kind of cat also I think) - purchased Aug 2008

BTW, the term mactop comes from the merging of laptop and mac.

Mactop b is faster than mactop a, but not so much that it matters for what they do.

Mactop a is MUCH faster than one of their friends G4 machines which was just 4 months older.

Mactop B is about the same speed as my HP Win vista machine running an AMD Turion 64x2, just for reference. Both of the mactops do cold start very fast though and have excellent wifi connections.

Mactop (a) came with 1 gig ram which was enough when it was just the basics, but it came to a screaching halt when we loaded the drivers for an HP wireless multifunction printer / scanner / fax. 2 gig of ram worked wonders to improve it, but that is the max for that older model.

Mactop (b) (purchased in Aug 2008) has the new OS, core 2 dual, and 2 gig ram. It is not nearlly as stable as mactop A by any measure. The old one virtually never needs a re-boot and just keeps going. The new one is sort of like a windows machine - it locks up esp. printing, and only responds to a hard shutdown / reboot. Sorry, but it is true, and all that is on it is office and firefox. BTW, we had to put firefox on it as the mac browser does not work with the kids school's web site.

Going back to the reason for dual graphics chip approaches, this is the direction of the future. An integrated chip is more fuel efficient, and the dedicated one is for performance. Looking at CPF does not use much GPU, but watching TV does.

BTW, once you do a few large file transfers using a GOOD USB memory stick on USB 2, you will just hate waiting on USB 1.1 speeds.

mdocod said:

Hmmm, more laptops without DVD/RW drives.....

They pioneered the movement towards them, not they are pioneering a movement away from them...

This company has an ego problem, lol. They are just operating on the "whatever we do is the new standard" premise. Their duel graphics chip-set on the new pro is probably about the dumbest thing I have seen, lol. Why not just have the 1 faster chip running? Maybe leaving behind some space for, idduno, maybe a DVD drive, or maybe a little more battery so it can get the full 5 hours runtime on the faster chip, lol.

The new Macbook looks like a strange stepping stone between where we are now in laptop graphics performance, and an attempt to get to where we want to go tomorrow, in a roundabout way. lol..

oh well... new models means the price of old comes down for me!

Click to expand...

New MacBooks and MBPs have "8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW" according to Apple.

And I'm not really sure what you mean about the graphics.

HarryN said:

Hi, just some personal observations from a house with 2 macbooks.

Even though I am more a PC win (and Suse Linux) fan, we do have 2 macbooks in the house.

Mactop a- Intel core duo, 2 gig ram, older OS (Tiger ?) purchased Aug 2006

Mactop b - Intel core 2 duo, 2 gig ram, new OS (some kind of cat also I think) - purchased Aug 2008

BTW, the term mactop comes from the merging of laptop and mac.

Mactop b is faster than mactop a, but not so much that it matters for what they do.

Mactop a is MUCH faster than one of their friends G4 machines which was just 4 months older.

Mactop B is about the same speed as my HP Win vista machine running an AMD Turion 64x2, just for reference. Both of the mactops do cold start very fast though and have excellent wifi connections.

Mactop (a) came with 1 gig ram which was enough when it was just the basics, but it came to a screaching halt when we loaded the drivers for an HP wireless multifunction printer / scanner / fax. 2 gig of ram worked wonders to improve it, but that is the max for that older model.

Mactop (b) (purchased in Aug 2008) has the new OS, core 2 dual, and 2 gig ram. It is not nearlly as stable as mactop A by any measure. The old one virtually never needs a re-boot and just keeps going. The new one is sort of like a windows machine - it locks up esp. printing, and only responds to a hard shutdown / reboot. Sorry, but it is true, and all that is on it is office and firefox. BTW, we had to put firefox on it as the mac browser does not work with the kids school's web site.

Going back to the reason for dual graphics chip approaches, this is the direction of the future. An integrated chip is more fuel efficient, and the dedicated one is for performance. Looking at CPF does not use much GPU, but watching TV does.

BTW, once you do a few large file transfers using a GOOD USB memory stick on USB 2, you will just hate waiting on USB 1.1 speeds.

Click to expand...

Well, I have a generation right in the middle, with the latest Mac OS X version (it's Leopard, BTW), and it's rock solid. I measure uptimes in months on my MacBook, and only ever restart with certain updates. I never had a crash of Leopard. Only applications ever crashed for me. I hope you know how to tell the difference.

That means that something is wrong with your "mactop b". Since you mentioned it, I suspect Office.

Microsoft Office 2008 is buggy. Very. Yes, Office programs break down, often. But that's not Apple's fault. And while they never have taken down the whole system, some crashes of Office I had were easiest resolved with a hard re-boot (like the time when Word and Excel crashed Spaces, Exposé and the Dock). Try to work with alternatives when possible. OpenOffice.org 3.0 came out today and is a veritable alternative. Not to mention free. I try to do as much Office work as possible with Apple's iWorks, and only run MS Office if there's some trouble with files I get from other people. iWorks and OOo write Office formats (I use 2003/4 mostly), and so far I got no complaints from Windows sufferers I send those files to.

Also, check your printer drivers. If possible, try to work with the printer drivers that came from Apple, and don't install the ones from the manufacturer. I only ever use the generic postscript driver for printing on my office laser printer (a Dell, no less), with absolutely no problems, and all options I ever need.

Also, do you have anything non-Apple installed? Such as, Logitech "drivers" (they're not drivers, just option setters, and crappy ones at that). Most of the little problems I had vanished once I kicked that crap off my harddrive. And you know what? The Logitech mouse still works, with all the options I needed.

Woops! never-mind, I looked all over the tech specs for the new models and did not see the "superdrive" listed for them. I just wasn't looking hard enough

I thought for sure they were going to make an attempt at taking the CD drive out of the laptop. They were, IMO, the pioneer in getting the industry away from floppy disks, and I think it was a good plan. I was worried they might be trying to do the same with our CD drives, lol. (which would not be a good idea at this time)

Eric

elgarak said:

Ummm, what?

All the current MacBooks (except the Air) come with a dual-layer DVD writer (the update today has removed the last entry level MacBook without it, and replaced it with one that has at a cheaper price). And re. the Air: Considering how often I use the drive while at work (i.e., never ... ok, once every three months or so), I wouldn't mind not logging it around all the time...

No blu-ray, though, since, as Steve Jobs puts it, it's "a bag of hurt" (as far as licensing is concerned).

Click to expand...

Another vote for a macbook or macbook pro. Both of the latest models sport nvidia graphics. Both will drive dual monitors. They are fast, stable, and with an airport, very portable around house or business. I've owned and used apple machines since the original macintosh, and my macbook is the most joyous and practical experience of them all.

When I was working for an apple developer (through the '90s) , we would upgrade hardware regularly every 2 years, allowing a decent resale price while taking advantage of the latest hardware/software developments. This may be extreme for home use but I believe the theory still applies. And given the macbook's pricing, a two to three year recycle program is not unreasonable.

Here's the thing, the reason I am eyeing the 1.42GHZ eMac is based on price point to performance and capability ratio. I can't afford anything new. The question at hand, is whether to buy the better eMac now, or wait until the cost of used/refurb intel macs comes down into lower price point (under $500 for something decent). I just found a source for the eMac I am eyeing for $200, and also found out that it will support 2GB of DDR memory, even though apple says it will only support 1GB.

If it works for you, that's all that matters - especially if a new machine is out of reach financially. As long as obsolescence doesn't rear it's ugly head your bargain won't feel like a wasted expenditure.

elgarak said:

Only applications ever crashed for me. I hope you know how to tell the difference.

That means that something is wrong with your "mactop b". Since you mentioned it, I suspect Office.

Also, check your printer drivers. .

Click to expand...

Both mactop A and B
- use office 2004 (same disk, as it allows multiple legal installs)
- the drivers are exactly the same drivers for the HP C7200 wireless multifunction printer. The linux like drivers just don't support the functionality of most of the multifunction machines - wish they did.
- The both use the latest version of firefox
- They connect to the same school web sites, use the same internet connection, both have 2 gig of ram, etc.

I am not kidding, the mac version of ie (safari I think) is not compatible with some of the downloads the kids do for school (and the school's insistence on us buying macs is the only reason we have these things) Too bad they couldn't just teach these kids on a regular Linux machine and make them ready for the real world.

No question, the old mac needs virtually no reboots, the new one - regularly - about the same as a win machine.

I try hard to get my family to switch to open office - I used it myself for a while, but my wife and kids - it would be easier to take their macs and ipods away and burn them than to get them to try open office.

Maybe we should take this thing in and see if Apple can find something wrong with it. Now, we just need to tell the school the mactop is down and he can't do his homework.

Try neo office and firefox

HarryN said:

Both mactop A and B
- use office 2004 (same disk, as it allows multiple legal installs)
- the drivers are exactly the same drivers for the HP C7200 wireless multifunction printer. The linux like drivers just don't support the functionality of most of the multifunction machines - wish they did.
- The both use the latest version of firefox
- They connect to the same school web sites, use the same internet connection, both have 2 gig of ram, etc.

I am not kidding, the mac version of ie (safari I think) is not compatible with some of the downloads the kids do for school (and the school's insistence on us buying macs is the only reason we have these things) Too bad they couldn't just teach these kids on a regular Linux machine and make them ready for the real world.

No question, the old mac needs virtually no reboots, the new one - regularly - about the same as a win machine.

I try hard to get my family to switch to open office - I used it myself for a while, but my wife and kids - it would be easier to take their macs and ipods away and burn them than to get them to try open office.

Maybe we should take this thing in and see if Apple can find something wrong with it. Now, we just need to tell the school the mactop is down and he can't do his homework.

Click to expand...

That sounds suspiciously like a hardware error. Like a not perfectly seated RAM stick. Or a damaged RAM.

Another problem could be corrupted permissions. Back up your harddrive, and run Disk Utility (it's in .\Applications\Utilities), select your HD and run "Verify Permissions" and/or "Repair Permissions" if an error is found. Did I say you should make a backup before? Make a backup before you run Disk Utility. Clear enough?

I'm still using a first gen 700MHz G4 eMac as my primary desktop machine. I've tolerated the pokey processor, but it's pretty painful to do audio and (especially) video processing on it. The lack of USB 2.0 has been a problem for a while, as some peripherals (HD based iPods, for example) really can't do USB 1.1. And lately, the lack of gigabit ethernet has also become a potential bottleneck. I've upgraded just about everything that I can over the last five years, and it's still been totally reliable, but it's really feeling long in the tooth. I considered upgrading to that last gen eMac at one point, but ultimately decided I was going to hold out for a new iMac after helping my father set up his. I don't' want another CRT, and I really can't justify getting another PowerPC-based machine.

I used to run heavily upgraded Cube until this spring... But I had to "upgrade" to mini because of the usb problems. Cube had only usb 1.1 and that does not work with ipod touch :-/. The mini is surpricingly good machine, only problem is lack of dual displays. My 8 year old cube could use my monitor and lcd-tv, but the mini can't.

I would suggest getting intel mini and 24" lcd screen, but if it's not possible maybe buy the "new" emac and try to sell the old one?

M.S said:

The mini is surpricingly good machine, only problem is lack of dual displays. My 8 year old cube could use my monitor and lcd-tv, but the mini can't.

Click to expand...

Can't you run a second monitor via a USB->VGA or USB->DVI converter?

I would avoid another eMac, as they have been problematic - http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/emac/topic4116.html

Because hardware evolves so fast, and software has to follow, I think I would use the eMac now until it dies or you can't stand the performance and gradual loss of functional support, then spring for the newest hardware you can afford.

Apple has been pretty good about supporting the last few generations of hardware, but eventually they have to cut off support of old systems. I'm using a 2005 1.67GHz G4 Powerbook which serves fine for general use, but I believe I'll have to update to an Intel Mac machine eventually to keep up with software changes.

gswitter said:

Can't you run a second monitor via a USB->VGA or USB->DVI converter?

Click to expand...

I have seen those, but I don't know about quality? Actually I know that you can run 2 monitors with same resolution with "matrox dualhead 2go" device and we have one at work, but I need different resolutions on screen and tv.