Just Bought a PowerBook. How'd I Do?

So, on a whim, I decided to venture to eBay to check out some older Apple laptops. Lo and behold, I suddenly end up buying a 12-inch PowerBook G4.

Here are the specifications:
Apple 12" Aluminum Powerbook
1.33Ghz G4 Processor
80GB Hard Drive
768MB RAM
64MB nVidia
Super Drive with CD/DVD Burner
Airport Extreme card
OSX 10.3
Bluetooth
New battery/power adapter

All in excellent condition.

Oh. And guess how much I got it for!

 

The hardware is worth about 50 dollars...so I'll say about 500?

 

I hope free...

 

pretty old... and not very useful... what are you planning on actually doing with that?

 

$100?

I wouldn't have paid more than $60, tbh.

edit: actually, I wouldn't have paid anything.

 

It's a cheap way to get into OSX, but hopefully you didn't pay more than $100

 

me, not more than 20$ i hope! but that is a nice old laptop lol

 

They are pretty old, but are still useful for some things, and also great to get into OS X. I can get one from eBay Australia for about 300-400 bucks.

 

Wow. Way to make me feel great guys.
Anyways, I got it for $250 shipped, which I thought was a nice deal for a decent laptop that I would use for notetaking, websurfing, music, and maybe iMovie.

I'll probably upgrade the RAM to 1GB or so. What do you guys think the bottleneck would be?

Oh, and another question. How much faster, if at all, would a $250 netbook be?

 

A lot faster... for $100 more you could of got a new, full fledged 13inch Pentium duel core notebook.

 

Yeah... lol

 

Hmm. What 13-inch dual core laptop costs $350?

 

a used Intel Mac mini isn't too bad on price and not so limited.

I don't think OSX 10.3 is a good way to get into OSX, but at least it should be updatable to 10.5... but wont ever run 10.6 or later.

I've seen some old Core Solo minis for like 200 or 300 (which seems to expensive to me) but they are still a lot faster machine with more capability... than a PPC Powerbook.

 

I'm looking for a laptop though, and preferably one that is smaller than 15 inches.

 

I'd just sell it back or return it, and grab a netbook. Something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/Asus-Eee-PC-100...tops_Nov05?hash=item439e4271be#ht_2891wt_1146 Not much more. Was a 10 inch ok with you? I wasn't sure what your budget was.

 

My budget is around $300. Hmm, I'm really looking for a Mac though.

Thanks,
Leon

 

I looked at Ebay, but with your budget, you can't afford to get a Mac. I kinda expected that...but maybe you can get lucky on an auction?

 

Haha, I already bought a PowerBook on eBay. I was just wondering if it was a good deal for a small Apple laptop.

Link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170462033765

 

I mean't a more...up to speed Mac. I guess you got the best you could. Good luck.

 

Alright, thanks for all the help!

By the way, what was the cheapest "up to speed" Mac you could find?

Thanks,
Leon

 

Well something with Leopard and more than 1 GB of RAM I suppose...but the only thing you'll get for less than 700 is a Powerbook. So with that in mind, this actually looked pretty good! http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-PowerBook...le_Laptops?hash=item2559aa86d0#ht_1550wt_1146
Even has iLife, Office, and iWorks included.
I'm not sure if it's worth the extra money over what you purchased though...

Glad to help!

 

if you want small and up to date enough, don't get anything with a PPC processor...

look for Core Duo or Core 2 Duo Macbooks.

There are many on there well under 700, even at current bids some under $100 (they wont go for that)... heck i see a old Core Duo Macbook going for $355 right now with 24 minutes left... though it looks like its got a messed up optical drive.

but basically, I'd never spend money on a PPC Mac if your wanting to get started with Apple, theres no reason starting in the past thats gone for good.

 

Yeah, I saw the MacBook too. But it does have a problem with both the trackpad and the optical drive.

I'm really looking for a small, light Apple laptop around $300 that has as few problems as possible.

 

Doh had a good point, you really want a Macbook with an Intel processor. But all you can do is bid and hope no one else does, because they normally go for at least 600. Nothing else you can do. Won't get better than what you have for 300.

 

the problem is ... Apple has changed a ton int he last few years with the switch to x86 processors. A lot of software is dropping support for PPC processors. If you want to buy an old PPC machine and run old software, knowing a lot of current software cannot run on it, then thats fine... but if you really want a usable machine for any length of time, its much better to save up a bit more and get something with an Intel processor.

 

Snow leopard and above no longer support PPC Macs.

 

yes... but its not just the OS, its all software. There is a lot of software out there that is Intel only. its mostly games right now, but its bleeding into other software too.

 

Yeah there is also software that is dropping support for 10.5, If you want a PPC Mac, just be prepared to run outdated and old software.

 

I suppose he already has another computer, and wanted a portable computer for $250, that's also a mac, so his purchase of a g4 makes sense.

 

How about we just congratulate him of his purchase, and that be the end of it. I'm sure your not going to want to run updated software on a PPC so it doesn't really matter. Congratulations Mate! I too, was going to buy one, just as a have around laptop.

 

Hmm...

At $250 you would be better served not getting an apple, of course. The thing is VERY old. But you can't get anything better out of a 250$ apple laptop, so that's good I guess. A lot of software requires at least 10.4, some requires 10.5... 10.5 won't run well on that, 10.4 should do okay.

Good luck.

 

you really should sell that thing back... i heard PPCs don't handle flash that well... if you're using it for web surfing flash is a crucial part isn't? (unless you're steve jobs or an entity that resembles a personified ipad)

 

Hmm. I've never ever heard that G4s can't handle flash.

By the way, Xhibit and joelkrause57 are correct in assuming that this won't be my primary computer. It'll only be a "netbook" that I carry around for note taking and music listening.

Thanks everyone for their help,
Leon

 

that's an interesting purchase. probably would have been a better idea to buy an actual netbook for $199 (see slickdeals.net) and then install OS X on it?

 

Apple EULA simply says it is not allowed to install Mac OS X on any non-Apple system and as such, discussion on running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware is prohibited at NBR.

 

Congratulations. A year ago when my custom made desktop motherboard died from me updating the bios, I got an old G4 iMac, and loved it. Sure it was pretty slow and there isn't all that much software but for OS X it was great. Please don't let the forum members discourage you too much, an old machine running OS X beats XP on some newer machines any day. Dashboard, expose and automator work fine.

 

You're in for an unpleasant surprise.

My old dual processor 1.25GHz G4 Powermac had 2GB of RAM. But the poor flash performance made surfing the web painful.

Flash always ran quite badly on the G4 machines, and Adobe stopped releasing Flash player updates for PPC a long time ago.

 

I would say it is the cheapest way to OS X legally. I would say these PowerBooks are really a strong machines. I bought my PowerBook new 6 yrs ago when the Alu15" was first introduced and white spot issue corrected. In that time, the onboard bluetooth has failed but that's about it, everything else is still running strong.
Yes, G4 processors might not handle flash very well, and the processor is working 100% when running flash or watching flash movie but it's still manageable. It's surely better than no flash support... at all (Hello iPad).
Yes, Apple and other software has dropped their support for PPC Macs. But the OP said he's going to use the laptop only for light task, so I don't think that would be a problem. A new game for Intel macs won't run properly anyway with that old GPU.
Just FYI, My PowerBook has 10.5 installed and it was running fine and IMO no noticeable difference from 10.4 performance wise (and mine is the G4 1.25Ghz version).

Finally, yes, there are netbooks that are faster and cheaper than the PPC macs, but they can't beat the build quality of aluminum PowerBooks and not to mention installing OS X on those netbooks would be illegal. Like I said at first, $250 is surely the cheapest way to get into MacOS X legally

 

I'd almost prefer a linux netbook. My real preference at $250 is something other than a computer.