This is a query for Macophiles really. Marianne is finding her 15" G4 iMac to be a bit slow and underpowered for her needs. (The first Mac I ever owned! If I sell it on eBay, I will include my unpacking shot.) I suggested we might consider buying her a new computer, and she was most disparaging about the current line of iMacs, or even the previous line of G5 iMacs. Instead, she said that the G4 desklamp style iMac that she has already is quite the most beautiful computer ever made and she just wants one like that only better. I did point out that she wouldn't be able to run PC games on it.
Buying a second-hand 20" iMac G4 (1.25Ghz) would seem to be the way to go. I seem to recall that some on my friends list either own or have owned this model (Geri? Dop?). Anything we should watch out for? Problems/issues/things that tend to go wrong?
In other news, I'm having a lovely birthday; thanks to everyone who wished me well. But it's a quiet one, because last week was incredibly busy at work and this week will be more so. We did get out last night, to the annual Mawkin barn dance at our local pub. And Jim Causley popped in and sang a couple of songs with them as well. Very cool.
I am glad to hear your birthday was enjoyable.
My experience is that this is true for most OS that I have used.
Strangely
Alternatively, I think she would be much less disparaging about the current line of iMacs if she had one. They really are very pretty, and they are super fast.
I did clean 200 items off her desktop which I suspect will improve performance substantially. Her habit of keeping 50 tabs open at once in the web browser is the problem; this is actually quite a capable machine for a schoolchild otherwise. In fact she was keeping multiple tabs open in both Safari and Camino, for reasons I don't entirely understand. She does do a little bit of Photoshop but this is the computer I did many, many illustrations for Plokta on. The 1.25Ghz machine would make it much easier to Photoshop and web browse at the same time; I had to be very very careful on the 800Mhz one.
I have a new-style iMac and love it to bits; M could clearly talk us into the bottom of the line of those PLUS a swivel mount for the wall so she can duplicate the anglepoise (I still miss the flexibility of my desklamp iMac after all these years). It would be faster, it would be highly future-proofed, it would run Windows programs. But she thinks they're ugly bricks.
Maybe what she really wants is a hardware hack. Keep the old iMac monitor and arm, but replace the guts with a Mini.
I think going to the 1.25Ghz will be just fine until at least 10.6.
You HAVE been quiet about this!!!
The monitor suddenly quit working late in 2006 or early in 2007...when the Mac-on-a-stick was about 3 years old. I went looking for information and found lots of comments from others with the same problem or set of problems. Eventually, I bought a 22" SyncMaster monitor, a little connector from Apple, plugged it in, and have been working that way ever since. (On-a-stick now sits off in a corner of my desk with the screen facing the wall. There's a bit of a glow to it, but nothing more.)
That solution works for me, but Marianne would be deeply offend by the aesthetics involved.