>I had exactly the opposite impulse, but I need to check it with you >folks. I have an "old" iMac G5. My wife had a very old IMac G3 >running OS9. We've been wanting to get her an iMac G5 as soon as we >could afford it, and my impulse is to snap up one of the Motorola >ones if I can.
The PPC based machines have not been discontinued yet. They are still available along side the Intel machines. And I expect, at least for a while, they will be available (and even after that, they will be available as refurbs) >For instance, she has a lot of old MS Word stuff on her computer. >Will she be able to open any of it with the Intel machine? I have an >educator's edition of MS Word 2004 that opened all my old files and >says that it can be installed on two machines. I presume that if she >got a Motorola iMac, I could install Word and she would be able to >open her old files. But if she gets an Intel machine, my Word 2000 >wouldn't work and all her old files would be lost. Why do you believe Word 2000 wouldn't work on an Intel machine? The Intel machines will run all OS X native software. Classic is the only thing being killed. Word 2000, I thought, was OS X native (carbon, so it ran native in OS X or OS 9). Plus, even if it doesn't run (isn't OS X native), Word 2004 sure will, and you say you have a copy of that. MS has been very good at letting their software open all the older versions of their file formats, so Word 2004 will open all Word files going back to 1.0. And the 2004 version file format is the same as the 2000 which is the same as the 98 version, which is the same as the PC 97 version... MS has not changed Word or Excel file formats since Office 97 on the PC, and Office 98 on the Mac brought that format to the Mac. In fact, there is a big roar going on right now in the PC world, because the new version of MS Office that MS is prepping for this year will finally be a new file format for their documents, which means no more easy swapping between new and old systems (many businesses don't like that, as new machines will have the new version, while old machines will not, which means they have to deal with the headaches of getting the new people to remember to save in the old format, or deal with the costs of upgrading the old to the new... this is the reason MS has not changed formats since 1997, they know their biggest customers don't want to deal with those headaches) So basically, the point to my spiel here is, there is no reason you won't be able to continue to use all the old documents on a new Intel based Mac. And chances are very good, you will be able to use the old software on the new Intel mac as well. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
