All good posts, keep em coming..
Oh calm down. Have you ever used one of the macs in question? They're great (ish) for word processing and browsing the internet. He says he wants to hook his DSLR upto it and i've seen CS2 mentioned in this topic already. They're not photo editing machines. I don't have any figures off the top of my head, just good old fashioned experience. And i'm telling you now editing anything on a £200 mac G4 is rubbish. Unless he really has nothing better to do with his time than watch the unsharp mask filter bar.
Edit: If you don't think it's rubbish, you either have a great deal more patience than I, or you deal with 800px x 600px photos.
My PC is a C2D 2Ghz 2GB 1920x1200 with a A4 wacom. I can do photo editing on that. I wouldn't use it as a primary photo editing station.
Part of the reason for getting a Mac would be just to give it a good shot. I may try it and love it, and decide that I MUST have a MacPro ASAP (or something), alternatively, I may say Meh.. aload of hype about nothing. OSX plays a BIG part in this, of course. And I really can't be bothered doing a hackintosh, and besides that defeats the point.
So, I would be trying CS2 out but not for any serious means, just to get a more complete feel on the operation of a Mac system. I may like it a lot and decide it's the thing for me or not. In my experience Macs just FEEL different to Windows. And Linux feels different again.
But my point regarding CS2 above was would a Dual G4 mac run CS2 better worse/the same than a (slow) intel mac given that I have read it's runs like a dog on intel macs because of the type of binary that it is.
The greater problem with any computer when it comes to editing large photos is not processing speed, but lack of ram, hence a mac mini is also slow at photo editing.
Photo editing isn't taking precedence in his decision making anyway, he just wants a budget mac. In my opinion buying a G4 and upgrading the RAM is his best option.
What RAM do they take and what is the max? If a mac mini is also slow at photo editing, what would you suggest the minimum Mac be for doing 'serious' stuff? Old Dual G5? or Skip to an Intel machine? Imac?
And I would agree with you. I just don't think the OP has enough money to be buying into the 'mac' crowd unless he has an imperitive reason to get his hands on one. Whether the owners admit it or not Apple deliberately price themselves higher up the market. It would be like going and buying a 924 because you want to be part of Porsche owners club
See this amuses me slightly. This was part of this thread - i.e. £200
is it possible?
My thinking is that rather than spend x amount on a bottom spec new mac, I can spend LESS and get a TOP spec older generation..
This to me is akin to buying a new BMW318 for whatever they cost, OR buying the older generation of car but it's a 5 series with all the toys second hand for less money...
Are these older machines any worse now than when they came out and costed thousands and did all the work that people asked them to do? Surely they still can do that today? If not why?
Also I have an alternative - I have a DUAL PIII 450Mhz system here, 1GB and a 160GB hard drive. I could load Ubuntu on to this, with a FX5200 that I have here use that to give me a second 'permanent' system for the reasons I detailed above.. (mails, music player, picture albums, etc) (and delay getting a mac until I win the lottery)
Cost for that lot is free...
What would you recommend?
He still uses it, doesn't mean it's any good. Doesn't mean this guy should shell out £200 of his hard earned for one either.
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