I was impressed by my wife's 1GHz eMac when it arrived almost a couple of years ago, even though I have beige boxes with ZIF G4/500s in them. Apart from the larger display that she needed, the eMac has been rock-solid in 10.3.9/9.2.2 from the day of its arrival. Mind you, the previous owner had obviously looked after it. But still I didn't have a single native G4 amongst my clutch of half-a-hundred Macs. A couple of months ago I bit the bullet and decided to set myself up properly to do at least some of my work for clients remotely. In brief, that meant at least a 20-in. Cinema Display and a native G4 machine to drive it. From Applebits I bought a 433MHz DA tower, giving myself a 133MHz system bus and good-quality audio-out for one of my other editing interests. Although I usually edit sound using 3-way monitors, or 'phones, DA wasn't going to hurt for quick sound-checks.

Now with 1GB of RAM and a Radeon 7500 ADC card to drive an LCD, and having morphed to 533MHz and now 733MHz, the G4 tower is also rock-solid in 10.4.11 for most purposes and 10.2.8 for sound. Compressing to MP3 (processor) or calculating and displaying a wave outline (graphics), for example, is almost breathtakingly fast, especially by comparison with the same processes on a G3/500Mhz machine that was formerly my principal 'work' machine.

Despite having nearly forty ancients, I have no hesitation in singing the praises of a machine that in Apple's pantheon is somewhat less than godly now. Almost an ancient, too. G4 rules! But then, so will my newly-arrived IIfx when I have tickled it up a bit. Virtue is where you find it.

de