Re: Mac convert - wondering which desktop is right for me.

[Stephen Jonke]

I have a PowerMac G4 Dual-533 (Digital Audio) model with 1 GB of RAM 
and it is quite capable, even for digital video. I paid $623 for it 
shipped (bought from ebay) on 8/25/04. Probably can get them a bit 
cheaper now. If and when I ever have any more money :) I plan to 
upgrade it with a dual 1.7 GHz or some such upgrade card, but really 
it's quite fast right now. I use it for iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Photoshop 
Elements, Gimp.app, MacMAME, etc. It does great with all those except 
perhaps not so great with iDVD - iDVD seems to require a lot of 
horsepower. Still iDVD is more or less usable with it. Maybe iDVD 5 
does better - I haven't gotten it yet. You'll probably want to get a 
ATA-133 or SATA PCI card for this Mac at some point as the stock ATA is 
ATA/66 and can't fully utilize larger hard drives. I have Sonnet's 
ATA-133 card - it works great and it supports "deep sleep". I also 
installed a Pioneer DVR-107 DVD+/-RW in it which also works great! I 
just hooked it up and it worked 100% with finder burning, iDVD, etc. 
The video card in mine is a NVidia GeForce 2 MX, but there were other 
options. I *think* the dual processor model came stock with the 2 MX, 
but I'm not sure of that. A GeForce 3 was an option. Oh, and don't 
forget to budget for a copy of OS X 10.3 as it almost certainly won't 
have it. But then there's the Tiger issue - 10.4 is suppose to be out 
in the first quarter of this year, so you may want to wait for that.

For a display, if you are on the cheap and thus looking at CRTs, I 
highly recommend an Apple 17" Studio Display (CRT). You can find them 
in either blue and white or graphite cases. Mine is graphite. These are 
really fantastic 17" CRT displays. Unlike any new 17" CRT that I could 
find, this one does 1280x1024 at a very usable 75 Hz. Every new 17" CRT 
I was able to find only did 1024x768 at 75 Hz or greater. Most do 
1280x1024, but only at a very flickery 60 Hz, which is unusable IMHO. I 
got mine on ebay for $60 shipped and it arrived in fantastic shape. 
Your deals may vary. :)

A handy (and free) program you should get is MacTracker. It has 
information on every model of Macintosh and other Apple hardware ever 
made, right up to the present (well, I don't think it includes the 
Apple II, but anyway...):

    http://www.mactracker.ca/
Steve
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