Buying a Mac

Moneymaker

As a consumer, who won't get rich by spending, I always buy second-hand Macs via eBay for myself and family. I bought one for a neighbour recently. (A lady who is not technically-minded and fed up with Windows problems.) I paid about £250 for a 1GHz G4 tower plus another £110 for an LCD monitor and a few more pounds to fit an internal backup Hard Drive and buy a USB keyboard and 2-button mouse with scroll-wheel. Altogether it amounted to less than £400 to produce a computer that is adequate for her needs (surfing, emailing and typing letters). A month later, she and her family are delighted with their "new" computer. I set up separate accounts for husband, wife and daughter, and 'fast user switching" makes it a dream to use.

I'm not enamoured with Apple's latest offerings and will continue to buy old hacks that can run "Classic" apps, which I rather like.

Leopard

I use an old Apple 1GHz G4 Power Mac, myself, as a Gigabit networked file and printer server. Bought it very cheaply, but in perfect condition, on eBay a year ago from a local seller (easy to collect!) and was delighted to discover it had the full 2 GB of RAM in it. It's been running Mac OS 10.5 faultlessly, 24/7, ever since.

If yours is a Mirrored Drive Door version you may find * THIS * helpful. I certainly did.

The standard "Delta" main fan in the MDD Power Mac is infernally noisy. Replacing it with the "SilenX" 120 mm fan (mentioned in the article) costs £15 and totally transforms it.

It's also worth installing Nap Mode (free - as explained) on these.

We put four 500 GB (IDE/PATA) 7,200 rpm hard drives into ours and use it for Time Machine backups (networked by means of its Gigabit Ethernet port).

Its Firewire port (FW800 on ours) can then be used - with SuperDuper - to back those up to an external hard drive once a day.

This Power Mac cost me £102 to buy and I gave it the 15" display, keyboard and mouse left over from a G4 Cube that I upgraded in 2002 (to 1.2GHz and a GeForce 3). The Cube is now nine years old but (maxxed to 1.5 GB of RAM) it runs the current OS X 10.5.6 briskly on a 23" Apple HD monitor, with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

Yet all we hear from PC fanatics on here is how Macs are "too expensive". :rolleyes:

I agree with you about eBay: I purchased my last four Apple laptops from (very carefully selected) sellers on eBay and all have been perfect. The latest was seven months ago: I bought a year-old, but unused, £1,600 MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz for £550. Then I give them Applecare extensions - also purchased for well less than half-price on eBay - just in case anything does go wrong with them.

But maybe we shouldn't tell Microsoft lovers these things. :shhh:

If they want to inflict expensive Windows machines on themselves, who are we to deny them their masochism?

ronc01

A word of warning - I have an early 2006 (Intel Imac) - the internal superdrive i.e CD/DVD re-writer has died.
Apple don't want know, and I've found it unbelievably frustrating getting help/support.
Never thought I'd say this ever but I really regret moving to Apple.:mad:

BigBouncyBall

do you have applecare? If not why should they replace a 3 year old disc drive for free. you might have been using it all day everyday for all they know. Electronics have a lifespan.

Marty_J

ronc01 wrote: »

A word of warning - I have an early 2006 (Intel Imac) - the internal superdrive i.e CD/DVD re-writer has died.
Apple don't want know, and I've found it unbelievably frustrating getting help/support.
Never thought I'd say this ever but I really regret moving to Apple.:mad:

Take it to an Apple Store, an authorised service provider, or if you're feeling handy, buy a replacement superdrive and fit it yourself.