The performance thing is sort of a big issue and also sort of "not" a big issue for me, at the same time. We have a few of the earlier (dual processor, not liquid cooled, AGP graphics) dual 2.3GHz PowerMacs in my office at work, running Leopard, and the story there is that they're usable, most people don't really notice the difference between them and the newer Core2 iMacs we have, but they do seem [to me] to be sitting on the edge of being really modern, and of being "old."
I've sort of gone through a few different phases, when it comes to computer performance. Back in 2006, I had a Pismo as my fastest and best computer, after downgrading from the 1000MHz TiBook in an effort to get something that had a working screen. I upgraded at the time to the 2.16 Core2 iMac, which was a great machine, and then in 2009, I swapped that out for my current ThinkPad, which pairs nicely with the desktop that I use, which is a dell inspiron desktop.
Between these two computers, there is an incredible amount of performance, and yet, I am sort of ready/interested in something different.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but between those times I've played around with some of the Pentium 4s we have at the office. These are business grade Dell OptiPlex machines, a 270 (northwood 3.0 with 1gb of mem) that I bought from surplus and the 280 (Prescott 3.4 with 2gb of ram) that we have in the office. What I realized at that moment was that in the PC industry, there was a moment in about 2005 where midrange to high end computers bought at that time were good enough for just about every daily use. We have dualcore 2.4GHz iMacs in the office with like 4gb of memory, but for what my job entails (the Internet, basically) those Dells would be just great.
I looked at the 270, which I used as a hulubox and then started preparing to use as a development machine for Windows Phone 7, running Visual Studio 2010 -- something msot people would suggest is a bad idea on a Pentium 4 with 1gb of ram. The (un?) surprising fact is that it did just fine for daily stuff. Things took awhile longer to launch but once they were there, it was great.
I don't know if this is because Pentium 4s are actually great at visual studio, or if it's because I just like office/professional grade stuff more than consumer things. I suspect the latter, which is one of the reasons I want a G5 more than a mini. It's a purely aesthetic thing and realistically, a downright stupid thing since the current mini could probably whup the pants off even that dual 2.7 G5. (Which I often herald as being the fastest or second fastest G5, and also one of the only machines not to be beaten in geekbench benchmarks by the original MacBook Air.)
Also, I do all of my photo management with Photoshop CS4 on my PC laptop, so putting CS3 or CS4 on such a Mac, would hypothetically be no problem for me, since I don't really intend to get a newer camera any time soon (which tends to need an upgrade to the Camera Raw extension, which then tends to need a newer version of Photoshop.)
The big difference is that Pentium 4 runs the same Windows 7 and VisualStudio2010 and Ofice2010 and Adobe Creative Suite (5, if I wanted to) as my current laptop and desktop, and that the Mac would get installs of the latest software it can run, and then most likely be stuck there for the rest of its existence with me. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since I am currently on CS4 with the PC anyway, and I can deal with Office 2008's terrible interface, for compatibility with Office2007 and 2010/2011 on my personal and school/work computers.
Additionally, I've realized that most of my actual "work" I can accomplish on my laptop, or with remote computing resources provided by my university, so I was interested in setting up a nice/interesting computer at my home. I will have a little bit of money in the coming year to more or less do whatever I want with, computingwise, if I choose to do anything at all, and it was either this G5, a SunRay thin client or two (and maybe a SPARC system with Solaris to do the actual computing, or flatdell with linux/solaris/opensolaris), or a workstation or gaming PC in order to get my virtualization (or train simulation) on.
At the very least a G5 would be interesting, I'd have a Mac again, it would hold me over until the release of Lion (and the inevitable purchase of a new Mac at that point,
) along with having cheap[ish] ram and disks available for it.
Does that... make sense? With all of that knowledge/rambling, does it still make sense to get it?
Thank you in advance for your advice and thoughts!
I've sort of gone through a few different phases, when it comes to computer performance. Back in 2006, I had a Pismo as my fastest and best computer, after downgrading from the 1000MHz TiBook in an effort to get something that had a working screen. I upgraded at the time to the 2.16 Core2 iMac, which was a great machine, and then in 2009, I swapped that out for my current ThinkPad, which pairs nicely with the desktop that I use, which is a dell inspiron desktop.
Between these two computers, there is an incredible amount of performance, and yet, I am sort of ready/interested in something different.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but between those times I've played around with some of the Pentium 4s we have at the office. These are business grade Dell OptiPlex machines, a 270 (northwood 3.0 with 1gb of mem) that I bought from surplus and the 280 (Prescott 3.4 with 2gb of ram) that we have in the office. What I realized at that moment was that in the PC industry, there was a moment in about 2005 where midrange to high end computers bought at that time were good enough for just about every daily use. We have dualcore 2.4GHz iMacs in the office with like 4gb of memory, but for what my job entails (the Internet, basically) those Dells would be just great.
I looked at the 270, which I used as a hulubox and then started preparing to use as a development machine for Windows Phone 7, running Visual Studio 2010 -- something msot people would suggest is a bad idea on a Pentium 4 with 1gb of ram. The (un?) surprising fact is that it did just fine for daily stuff. Things took awhile longer to launch but once they were there, it was great.
I don't know if this is because Pentium 4s are actually great at visual studio, or if it's because I just like office/professional grade stuff more than consumer things. I suspect the latter, which is one of the reasons I want a G5 more than a mini. It's a purely aesthetic thing and realistically, a downright stupid thing since the current mini could probably whup the pants off even that dual 2.7 G5. (Which I often herald as being the fastest or second fastest G5, and also one of the only machines not to be beaten in geekbench benchmarks by the original MacBook Air.)
Also, I do all of my photo management with Photoshop CS4 on my PC laptop, so putting CS3 or CS4 on such a Mac, would hypothetically be no problem for me, since I don't really intend to get a newer camera any time soon (which tends to need an upgrade to the Camera Raw extension, which then tends to need a newer version of Photoshop.)
The big difference is that Pentium 4 runs the same Windows 7 and VisualStudio2010 and Ofice2010 and Adobe Creative Suite (5, if I wanted to) as my current laptop and desktop, and that the Mac would get installs of the latest software it can run, and then most likely be stuck there for the rest of its existence with me. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since I am currently on CS4 with the PC anyway, and I can deal with Office 2008's terrible interface, for compatibility with Office2007 and 2010/2011 on my personal and school/work computers.
Additionally, I've realized that most of my actual "work" I can accomplish on my laptop, or with remote computing resources provided by my university, so I was interested in setting up a nice/interesting computer at my home. I will have a little bit of money in the coming year to more or less do whatever I want with, computingwise, if I choose to do anything at all, and it was either this G5, a SunRay thin client or two (and maybe a SPARC system with Solaris to do the actual computing, or flatdell with linux/solaris/opensolaris), or a workstation or gaming PC in order to get my virtualization (or train simulation) on.
At the very least a G5 would be interesting, I'd have a Mac again, it would hold me over until the release of Lion (and the inevitable purchase of a new Mac at that point,
) along with having cheap[ish] ram and disks available for it.Does that... make sense? With all of that knowledge/rambling, does it still make sense to get it?
Thank you in advance for your advice and thoughts!