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My office has a PowerMac G4 (Model #M7681), if I bought it from them how much is reasonable? Can I upgrade the hard drive (currently a 30 GB)? Is RAM expensive for it? Does it run OS 10.4.5? Can iLife 06 run descent on it? Can I find a Superdrive for it?
Sorry for all the questions, but this would be my first Mac.
turbulentfurball
2006-05-03, 15:22
My office has a PowerMac G4 (Model #M7681), if I bought it from them how much is reasonable? Can I upgrade the hard drive (currently a 30 GB)? Is RAM expensive for it? Does it run OS 10.4.5? Can iLife 06 run descent on it? Can I find a Superdrive for it?
Sorry for all the questions, but this would be my first Mac.
Hard Drive: Yes, any standard ATA drive will be fine.
RAM: It takes PC133 DIMMs. It shouldn't be hard to find.
OS X: It'll run 10.4 with no problems. It's likely that Leopard will work with it too, but we won't know until the system requirements are published.
Superdrive: Shouldn't be hard to find either.
As for the price: I wouldn't pay more than $150 for that rig, and $100 or slightly less is more like it. It's a 466 MHz, the slowest of the Digital Audio series, released five years ago.
Thank you. That helps greatly. I had no idea what a reasonable price would be. Now lets see what they will offer.
My office has a PowerMac G4 (Model #M7681), if I bought it from them how much is reasonable?
How much for a 733mhz PowerMac. $275 at most.
Can I upgrade the hard drive (currently a 30 GB)?
Yup. You can use up to (oh shit, brain fart--is the limit 120 or 160 without a card?) 120GB Hard Drives in it. With an internal ATA card you can use any size. You can also fit multiple HD's in this machine. I have one with 4 HD's in it right now.
Is RAM expensive for it?
It uses PC133 RAM. You should expect around $55 for a 512MB chip.
Does it run OS 10.4.5?
Yes
Can iLife 06 run descent on it?
With enough RAM, it will run decent.
Can I find a Superdrive for it?
Yup. You should be able to find quite a few DVD-RW's from OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/) or newegg.com that will work.
Sorry for all the questions, but this would be my first Mac.
This is a great Mac. It is pretty much rock solid and problem free.
Good Luck
As for the price: I wouldn't pay more than $150 for that rig, and $100 or slightly less is more like it. It's a 466 MHz, the slowest of the Digital Audio series, released five years ago.
Luca, from googling it would appear that a M7681 is actaully a 733 DA.
733's on ebay are going for $300-350.
If it is for some reason a 466 then I would agree on Luca's price.
turbulentfurball
2006-05-03, 15:45
FYI, there are a few similarly specced G4 PowerMacs on the UK eBay with a BIN price of several magnitudes higher than what Luca said, so be careful.
One of them is priced at £229, or $421.
I assumed that it was a 466 MHz one based on the hard drive size. Only the 466 shipped with a 30 GB. Higher models all had larger hard drives.
If it is indeed a 733 MHz one, then it might already have a DVD burner installed (albeit a really slow, old one that should probably be replaced). It also has a much faster processor. If it's a 733 MHz then I'd increase the reasonable price to somewhere around $250.
JayReding
2006-05-03, 17:55
It also depends on what you want to do with it. If you're doing movie editing and the like, you're probably better off saving up cash and getting a Mac mini then paying for a computer that just doesn't have the horsepower to do very demanding work.
If you're going to use it to just store photos, browse the web, and write letters, 733mHz will be on the slow side, but it will run just fine. Adding as much RAM as possible will help.
If I were in your position, and could swing the cash or save for a while, I'd go with a Mac mini. You'd get a much, much faster machine with the latest architecture that would do just fine running iLife with all the trimmings and would be in a much more convenient form factor. By the time you're at the $300 level, you're already half way to a Mac mini, which is a much better computer for the money.
I assumed that it was a 466 MHz one based on the hard drive size. Only the 466 shipped with a 30 GB. Higher models all had larger hard drives.
That doesn't mean much. My G4 GE Power Mac (I got it used four years ago) states it had a 20GB drive when it shipped, but it came with a 10GB drive, its not like its hard to change the drives in these machines. If it has been used by a company for example, they may have moved the stock drive into another, newer machine.
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