[G4] G5 or G4?

[Alan Kidner]

Hi Ray

I have the same Quicksilver as you.  Have you considered improving it 
rather than replacing it?

First step if you have not done so already would be to max out the RAM 
by putting in three 512MB DIMMs

I picked up some items on ebay: a Sonnet Tempo  RAID card; a GeForce 
7800 GS graphics card; and a copy of Leopard.  Sadly you can not boot 
from drives attached to this RAID card (I have two drives acting as one 
volume [RAID 0 - striped] for extra speed) but you can move the 
Applications folder and the user folders, etc. to the faster volume.

The graphics card was the cheaper PC version so I had to flash the BIOS 
chip with a Mac ROM.  Also added a DVD-RW drive and hacked the Leopard 
installer to make it install on a system with slower than minimum spec. 
processor.  Information on all this is readily available on the net, but 
I can supply some notes if you are interested.

If you want a replacement (used) machine and have the money I would go 
straight for a G5, it will last you longer and you could max it out to 
improve performance at later date if necessary.  To some extent your 
choice may depend upon what bargains you can find!  Have fun.

Best regards

Alan

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> I've decided it's time to buy a new used Mac. My Quicksilver 733 G4 is 
> getting long in the tooth and I've gotten all these years from the 
> original hard drive, but I worry.
>
> Logic says that a G5 is the way to go, still I'm intrigued with the 
> idea of a "late model" G4 (perhaps a MDD 1.25) that I can max out at 
> perhaps half the price.
>
> I'm recently retired so I really don't need the latest and greatest 
> and fastest. But I do want to get many years service from it.
>
> Any ideas, arguments, suggestions?
>
> Ray