I’m looking at refurbished iMacs. They’re a bit cheaper than new and as good as new.
They have 3 20" iMac G-5s at the online Apple Store. I need to know which of the three is the best buy for the money. I just don’t know what most of the specs are or do. Hubby wants the biggest bestest, even though he understands even less than I do.
Could someone walk me through the various DDRs, ATI and GDDR3s? Does he need a bluetooth? An extreme Airport? What are thes things??
I just want to be sure I get the most for my money.
Thanks
That isn’t part of the question. I have an iMac G-5. I love it.
I’m not asking which one to buy as much as what all the options mean and what he’ll never use or what he miss if it wasn’t there.
The G5 you refer to is the processor which has now been replaced by the Intel Core Duo. The last one is also the one I would buy, if I had the money to blow on a computer right now.
There’s an important difference between the G5 and the Core Duo. The Core Duo is the latest Apple processor, and while it will run some programs faster, it will NOT run anything in Classic mode (Mac OS 9 programs). So if your husband still relies on any programs like that, you’ll have to buy the G5. But otherwise, I second the recommendation for the last one. You can even install Windows XP or Vista on the Intel machines and run them as both Windows and Mac machines if you need to run Windows software.
That last one is the most recent - the others are discontinued models. I’d defninitely go with it.
Actually, the Core 2 Duo is the latest iMac processor (and it’s only in the third one on that list).
Blame Intel for the confusing name - the Latin part of the name refers to the number of cores, the number to the processor generation. Thus a “Core 2 Duo” is a dual core, second-generation Core processor.
There are three different processors on that list. In order of release (which generally corresponds to power, especially with Apple hardware in the same line):
iMac G5 - These have only retained value for people who really need to run PowerPC-optimized software. Don’t buy unless you get a really good price (or if you need it, but you probably don’t need me to tell you in that case).
iMac Core Duo - Vastly better (on paper) than the G5 - there’s essentially two processors in there. In practice, much better than the G5. Prices were initially set high since these were the first Intel Macs, so don’t let the discount percentage fool you.
iMac Core 2 Duo - The latest and greatest. Given the extra memory stick in there, this is without a doubt the one you want. This is a pretty decent deal.
I can’t run any Classic mode programs on my eMac G4 since I upgraded to 10.4. I don’t really miss any of it, anyway. And if I did, I’d go get my PowerMac out of storage and start it up! Fully upgraded with 64 mb of RAM! And OS 8!
Well, I just launched it successfully, and opened a couple of apps. But now I notice my Finder in X is behaving weirdly. It just “hiccupped” and the menu bar disappeared. Beats me what is going on. As I said, I don’t use any of those applications anymore, so no real reason to launch it.
Only get the G5 if you have to run classic apps. And I really can’t see why you’d need to do that anyway. There’s absolutely no reason to get a G5 over an intel, plain and simple. The last intel even has 1GB of RAM, which is the bottom amount that you’ll want.
Regarding Classic:
Classic (i.e., OS 9.x and below) can only run on G5s, G4s, G3s and other PPC 6xx series CPUs. If you really need to use applications that only run in Classic, you should go for the G5. (For example, I have yet to spring for the OS X Photoshop, and keep Classic around solely for using my old PS).
As others have said, however, the Core 2 Duo (the third one on your list) is the best machine of the bunch; it’s the one that current and future OS X development will be optimized for.
