[G4] upgrade or buy new mac?

[Richard Meyeroff]

>Just bought my wife a new Macbook so of course we are now feeling 
>the need to upgrade or replace the desktop.
>
>Right now I have a DP500 with 2 gigs of ram an ATI 9200 video card 
>pushing to 20" LCDs and it is running Tiger.  What I would like is a 
>machine that doesn't seem quite so sluggish while scrolling through 
>my e-mail,  run the latest iphoto  and office.  I would be nice to 
>run Leopard (is it required for the new iphoto?)  I've thought about 
>a mini but I want to keep the dual monitors.  So do I try a 
>processor and video card upgrade? ( I need a new video card in the 
>DP450 in the basement so it could take the 9200) or do a go with a 
>whole new box?  Of course I'd like to keep things a cheap as 
>possible but I'm not sure if I'd be better continuing to soup up the 
>old girl or go for something with a faster bus.
>
>Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
>
>Thanks!
>
>Brad
>

I have read the other replys and disagree.

While it is apparently less expensive to stay on the trailing edge, 
you may be penny wise and dollar foolish.

If you are earning a living from your machine take in to account that 
any machine before the Mac Pro is using PPC Chips not Intel. What 
this means that as time goes along and the OS and applications are 
more and more optimized for the Intel chip you will be getting 
further and further behind at a rapid pace.  I have clients who have 
kept older machines and were amazed what they could accomplish when 
the new machinery appeared.

There is a very big change between even the earlier Intel chip and 
the current Peryan based chips.
If you remember, the velocity engine in the G4 was better than the 
one in the G5 and many people found that when doing certain things 
the G4 was faster than the G5.  Well the Peryan chips have SSE4 which 
is Intel version of the Velocity engine from the G4.

So if you can afford it I would recommand the purchase of a new 
MacPro.  I would wait till Leopard 5.2 is shipped.

-- 
Have a Happy and Enjoy

Richard E. Meyeroff
Meyeroff Computer Consultants
410-258-7503
Richard at Meyeroff-C-C.com
Member  Apple Consultants Network  ACHDS

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