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186
 
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| Hi all, I am looking at buying a 2nd hand Mac. They seem like a lot of fun. after some looking around i have come across this. Apple G4 400MHz, 256MB RAM, keyboard, mouse, 17 CRT monitor, OS 9.1 pre-installed and delivery for £193.88
is this good price? A Pc base unit same spec would cost from as little as £25
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Pentium
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| Hi neil, first point do not read too much into the CPU speed the Power PC chips have a different architecture to the Standard chips in PC's. As for the price well Millions of PC's thousands of Mac's, it is the rarity and Prettinesss that keps the prices high. I keep an eye on this lots bargain range, as they are pretty much the Cheapest mac suppliers I have found. http://www.2ndchancepc.co.uk/bargains.html
Chris
PS They all come fully setup and preloaded with the OS version you choose.
EDIT TYPO
 SPIKE09
REMEMBER IT'S JUST A RIDE (BILL HICKS THE GREATEST)
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Octo-core Atom @ 233GHz (ES)
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I guess on top of that price you'd need also to factor in a copy of OS X (will it even run on such a machine?).
Classic PCs
Original IBM PC (4.77MHz 8088, 256KB RAM, monochrome) · Original IBM PC XT (4.77MHz 8088, 512KB, 10MB HDD, monochrome) · Original Compaq Deskpro (7.14MHz 8086, 640KB, 20MB HDD, CGA graphics)
Home Computers
Commodore VIC-20 · C64 original · C64 Terminator edition · C16 · Amiga 500 · Amiga 600 · Amiga 600 HD · Amiga 1200 Acorn Electron · A3010 (Archimedes) · A4000 (Archimedes) Others Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K · Dragon 32
Consoles
Nintendo Wii · GameCube purple (x 2) · GameCube black · N64 black (x 2) · N64 clear blue · SNES (x 2) · NES (x 2) · DS silver (x 3) · GBA SP silver · GBA purple · GBA clear · Game Boy Color clear · Game Boy Sega Dreamcast x 3 · Saturn · Mega Drive II · Mega Drive · Master System Atari 10-in-1 · Jaguar (x 2) · 7800 · 2600 wood-grain Microsoft Xbox 360 · Xbox Others Mattel Intellivision · MB Vectrex · GoldStar 3DO · Sony PlayStation (original)
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Pentium
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I do not know if the one Neil is looking at has an OS but all the Macs on the Link are supplied with an OS included in the price. a bit cheaper and some reasonable kit for a Mac Newbie. I planned to buy one a while back hence the knowledge of the site, the new d805 put the kibosh on that little plan.
Chris
SPIKE09
REMEMBER IT'S JUST A RIDE (BILL HICKS THE GREATEST)
rig 1 Spike Athlon 64 X2 3800,1 gig pc3200 (dc) ,radeon X1900XT rig 2Angus Ogg Athlon 2200,ASUS A7V8X-X,1GB2 PC2700,RADEON 9600XT rig3 The Dagda Acer aspire 1353 xv, AthlonXP-M 2400, 512 Mb PC2700 .Rig 4 Q6600,ASROCK DUALQUAD thingy,2GB GEIL DDR540 X1600pro rig 5 TVTWINs- IntelE6400,2Gb DDR667,Nvidia6600 silent.rig6.AMD 64 3700 1Gb pc3200 rig7.Smokey Q6600,2GB pc5400,x800gto, asrock quad-dualthingummy| E6420,4GB ram and Q6600 currently homeless TOP 1,000 in the world in F@H
F@H BETA TESTER- team MM FOLD it does every body good join team 46590 2ND Mug. Hmm you know who you are.
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286
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OSX will indeed run on that Mac, though I'd recommend a little more RAM. You'll probably have to update the firmware. See http://tinyurl.com/5mvr5 to see which version you're already running, and http://tinyurl.com/yr6nf to see if you need to upgrade.
I used to run Tiger on a 350MHz G3, and it was fine.
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286
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To be honest I haven't looked at second hand Macs recently to know if that's a decent price, I assume that's from a shop rather than an individual and you're getting a 3-6 month warrantee?
About a year ago I purchased a 300Mhz G3 tower with loads of accessories and software for £40 as I wanted to play around with some Mac OS 9 software, that was from an private seller rather than a shop. Of course the G4 is a significantly faster and more advanced computer than that G3, but nearly £200 seems a little high for a computer released over 6 years ago. I'm surprised that the release of relatively cheap Intel Macs like the new Mac Mini hasn't pushed down G4 prices more than that.
Add some extra RAM (IIRC they just use standard PC100/133 RAM) and it should run the current version of Mac OS X well enough (no guarantee about future releases), but obviously the performance wouldn't be close to a Mac or PC released in the last few years.
Having said that, the G4 had an advantage over contemporary Intel/AMD CPUs. The difference may not have been as great as Apple's benchmarks indicated, but there's no doubt that the G4 was significantly faster per Mhz than Intel's Pentium 3. That G4 would undoubtedly be a highly usable computer for just about anything except gaming and high end 3D graphics or video editing.
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286
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Last Login: 29/12/2008 23:19:49
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I agree that £200 is a bit steep. I sold my similar specced G4 400MHz 18 months ago on Ebay for £250. It had more RAM plus an 80GB HDD, OS X 3.9 Panther installed plus I threw in my old Iomega CD burner as well. I would think you could now get something similar to mine for £120 or so. If £200 is your 9sensible) limit to start with look for a G4 tower with speed of 733MHz or so, if not an early PowerPC Mac Mini. These should be out there in this price range and should have OS X installed as standard.
If you plan on running OS X Tiger (10.4) then 512MB is really a minimum for RAM as the OS needs 256MB just to run properly.......
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186
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I bought an imac a few months backs. 350Mhz processor with 64Mb ram running OS9. It came with a printer, Zip drive mouse and keyboard. It cost me £25. I swapped the disk for a 60Gb unit and upgraded the memory with some PC133 sticks I had knocking about increasing the total RAM to 348Mb. This now runs OSX Panther (the one before Tiger). It's not fast blistering but it is very usable all the same. I could get more performance by adding more RAM but hey, it does what I want. It is a great little machine especially for the price. I would highly recommend you get a Mac. You can check out what to expect to pay on ebay as they feature regularly there. The downside is, I wish I could afford an all singing all dancing Mac now 
askTheProphet
Box 1: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ x2, Lanparty UT nF4 Ultra D, 2GB G.Skill (2x1GB) PC4000 DDR500, 200Gig Maxtor SATA, Antec Sonata II Case, Swiftech MCX159-CU Northbridge Cooler. Running Vista Beta 2
Box 2: Intel P4 2.4, Gigabyte m/b, 1GB Kingston value RAM, 200Gig Maxtor PATA, Running Mepis Linux
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