Where’s my cut? 
Oh, I don’t doubt it. My G4/450 is still puttering right along with Safari, Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office, though not all open at once. But after using the 1.25 GHz flat-panel iMac in my office at the paper, this computer feels just a wee bit sluggish…
My G4/500 has a little over a gig of RAM and is running OS 10.2.8. It feels sluggish at times, yes, but it’s not a huge issue. I have tons of things open at the same time and get my work done. I know that if I compared it to a spiffy new Mac I’d be more aware of how slow it is, but as it is, it’s not so bad. Funny, even when I run my new(er) PC with a 1.4 GHz Athlon CPU, (also a gig of RAM), it doesn’t feel that much faster than my old G4. (I do like my PC just fine, though.) When given a choice, I always run Photoshop on the G4.
I’m thinking about saving up for one of those CPU upgrades from Sonnet or Otherworld Computing. The prices keep going down. I could get a 1.x GHz CPU upgrade for a few hundred bucks. I’m thinkin’ about it, thinkin’ about it . . .
Still using a first generation 10 gig iPod here… It’s got tons of tunes in it, and works just fine… Sure there are better iPods out there, but I’m managing to survive…
Seems to me you can either get bitter over a newer iPod or you can enjoy the one you have… I’d vote for enjoying it…
I use a G4/400 with OS X 10.2 for GarageBand and making digital music. It still works pretty well. Not as good as my G5/dual 1.8 at work, but hey, it is also nearly 4 years old. The only downside is that it has that old LBA on the ATAPI bus so it only recognizes hard drives to 128 GB.
With the third generation iPod, you’ll still be the envy of your block. Look on the bright side, you’ll probably have to wait 3 months to even get your hands on the 4th gen iPod, judging from how back-ordered the iPod Mini was. I have that same 15 GB iPod, bought when it was $399 and the 10 GB was $299. A month later, the 15 GB iPod was $299 (albeit without case, dock, and remote) and the 20 GB was $399. In the words of the 20th century philosopher Kurtis Blow, these are the breaks.
Actually, the new fourth-generation iPods are getting into people’s mitts already. iPodLounge.com just did a detailed hands-on review of one.
'course, my rule for availability is whether or not I can walk into a store and buy the darn thing, but somebody’s getting the new toys…
I think they’re supposed to be in the stores this week. They had them for sale at the Apple Store here when I stopped by a couple of days ago, although they didn’t have any out for people to play with yet.