On May 19, 2004, at 3:13 PM, Thomas Baker wrote:
I 'd like to buy a second hand Mac for a relative, and I could use recommendations what to look for (I'll probably get it off Ebay).
The absolute best model in terms of long-term bang-for-the-buck right now is the Sawtooth G4 (the first AGP models) imo.
They have a reasonably zippy (100 mhz) motherboard, can take processor upgrades up to dual 1.25 MHz G4s, have sufficient expansion room and basic processing power to be a good system for many many years to come.
As is, they're a major upgrade over what he's got, and additional upgrades are cheap. (I got a AGP G4/350 here at work and spent ~$300 boosting it to a G4/800 + 52-16-52x CDRW + 256 Mb more ram, and have a real nice, fast, stable system.)
The next best value would probably be a B&W G3, some of which are getting really cheap nowadays. Those can be boosted to a pretty snappy G4, but as some have pointed out, will be the next machine on the OSX upgrade chopping block.
If he wants to run OSX, I wouldn't go much lower than that.
As this is a gift, that's probably the best route. The *very* best route, of course is to scrape together the cash for a new Mac, which will have the absolute longest useful lifespan, but that's likely out of the price range you're looking at.
-- Bruce Johnson
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