>I am slowly out >growing my system as I have upgraded to Office 2001 and Photoshop 7 and a >few other new programs.
Whew, yeah those are big-time for the lowly 4400. I typically stick with OS 8.6, Office 98, and Photoshop 3 on my 4400 (currently on loan to a friend). And yes, your biggest limitation is probably memory, plus the cost of L2 cache processor upgrades. >I can not afford a new one but I can afford one of the older Mac >and just keep my PCI cards, add some cheap memory and a G3 or G4 card and I >will be moving right along....Can anyone make a recommendation as >too what Mac would be a great buy for >expandable memory, PCI availability and the best to upgrade to a G3 or G4 >card. A six-slot PCI powermac (like the 9600) with a good CPU upgrade might be nice, particularly if you use Photohop 7 a lot, in which case you could get a G4 450/500Mhz upgrade card for it for around $250. I started out with a barebones 7500, and after about $300 worth of upgrades (to 200Mhz 604e, 256MB RAM, Ultra2 Wide SCSI card, USB card, OS 9, 4 meg VRAM, 18.2 GB U160 hard drive) it is now quite usable with Office:mac 2001 and most of everything else I use. I have recently put another $70 into a Rage 128 video card, and soon I will drop another $250 into a G3 or G4 upgrade card. I imagine this will be the most I will put into her, which will bring my total investment to around $600+. This could have bought me a pretty nice Blue & White G3, but I wanted the full build-your-own FrankenMac experience. Therefore, I would seriously recommend that you look for a G4 PowerMac 350/400/500Mhz model. You can get one of these for $800 or thereabouts, and probably not even have to upgrade it. (Smalldog has a used 350Mhz model for $899 right now.) By the time you bought a 9600, added a G3 or G4 upgrade, and maxed out the memory, you would probably have $800+ invested. Short of that, you could get a Blue & White G3 for around $600. -- --Chris PM 7500/604e 200Mhz 4 gig SCSI 256 megs OS 8.6 (This machine rocks!) -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
