Thoughts on Dual 2.7 G5

[Cory5412]

yeah, the extended warranty thing I'd heard about was, as I recall, applicable to all of the water-cooled G5s and was happening as of like... August of this year.

I probably won't get it though, because you are correct that it is in a very odd position of being somewhat too new for a hobby system and somewhat too old to really be a main computer. Especially when I've got not just one but a pair of Core2s hanging out at my house.

I'll probably either go for the workstation/gaming computer/newmac for some train simulator or some epic virtualization at home, or a small thin client deployment. That, or keep using the stuff I have here now.

 

[CJ_Miller]

You folks are really having problems with Youtube? Three years ago I was watching it on my 600MHz G4 B&W at my mother-in-law's house and never had any problems with it - I think my son still uses it when he is there in the afternoon. Has Flash suddenly gotten a lot worse when I wasn't paying attention? Maybe it depends if you are watching X264 video files, because my G4s have always had problems with those.

 

[Cory5412]

This was back in like 2005 and 2006, but I had issues with my 1000MHz TiBook playing it. This was on fresh installs of both 10.3.x and 10.4.x, both with and without updated flash installs, and in different web browsers of the time (OmniWeb, Firefox, Safari) -- sometimes I just begin to think that there was something pretty bad wrong wtih that specific machine.

 

[techknight]

when you make a statement like "3 years ago" in the internet world, a difference of merely 3 years is a difference of an eternity.

3 years ago my stuff worked fine on youtube. but youtube has done umpteen upgrades with their site and video player software/rendering/etc.... to support more modes, more compression schemes, etc etc etc...

so it went from the original 320x240 15fps youtube original format to something thats insane nowadays, and if i remember correctly, thier latest video player/renderer upgrade now encodes and forces any new video uploads into a h264 format for the best quality with the least filesize, which is why even at 360 or 480p it plays awful, if at all.... However it did help thier server load quite alot, as it doesn't take as long to buffer a shorter file size.

So even though the "new" 240p still plays somewhat fine, but nowhere NEAR as good as it did "3 years ago" as everything was encoded using a different format then. Of course, youtube still supports WAP/mobile mode, using the old 320x240 format that buffers in quicktime, so even the earliest of the PPC macs can render the mobile compression scheme.

However, them keeping support of that will only shorten, as mobile devices reach the gigahertz range now and have 3d accelerators and rendering capabilities, something the "tegra" line started.

 

[Bunsen]

Dual 1GHz G4, 1.5Gb RAM, Nvidia Geforce 4MX, OS X 10.4.11: Some youtube videos play just fine, some do the old 1-2fps slideshow thing. I use a FF extension called DownloadHelper, which adds a button to download the video, and (sometimes) lets you extract the raw file from the Flash wrapper.

youtube still supports WAP/mobile mode, using the old 320x240 format that buffers in quicktime

How do you access that?

 

[MacJunky]

http://m.youtube.com/ It seems.

 

[techknight]

As i mentioned before, my guess is they are implementing full h264 on all videos, slowly but surely. which is why some play perfect, and some dont. the codec used is why...

 

[Temetka]

If it were me, I would buy the G5 for $250 no questions asked.

I bought a 1.8GHz G5 a few years ago and I loved the machine to death. I sold it to a friend of mine whose financial situation is poor and was still using his Amiga 4000 as his main computer. He loves it and of course is very happy with the speed.

I miss my G5. I miss that it was limited to PPC software, yet ran IMO, the most exotic version of the PPC CPU to ever grace a Macintosh. The G5 was a triumph in terms of not only case design, but a complete architecture over haul for Apple especially when they really needed a high performing system to compete in the workstation market.

Cory, if you want the G5 and have a use for it, then don't bother trying to justify it. Just get the machine.

I know I would.

 

[bizzle]

Having it leak is the best possibly senario. As I mentioned before, my friend just got one that someone was throwing away that leaked. Apple handed him a nice new Mac Pro for it.

 

[Unknown_K]

A new mac pro in trade doesn't do much for somebody wanting to run PPC software. I can see wanting the best and last generation of PPC software running macs, just like I have a fondness for the last OS 9.x booting mac.

Speaking of x86 pro towers, how are the resale values holding up on the first generation machines? I was wondering if used Apple machines are going to drop in value like crazy to mirror what happens with every other OEM x86 machine (shorter upgrade cycles, less resale values).

 

[bizzle]

First generation four cores with a decent amount of RAM still fetch $1000 easily. It's kind of insane people still want that kind of money for it considering the huge difference in performance of them vs the new current machines. For example the base model original Mac Pro scores about 3700 and a current base model will hit around 8800 in Geekbench. I know Geekbench numbers do not mean everything, but its gives you an idea. Besides the fact that its old, slow (in comparison) and used, it's also out of warranty and incredibly expensive to repair. If I was going to spend that much on a machine I'd rather just buy new and enjoy the benefits of a warranty and modern technology.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I can see wanting the best and last generation of PPC software running macs, just like I have a fondness for the last OS 9.x booting mac.

So could I, which is why I have a quad G5 and a dual MDD/1.25, both of which I bought new for exactly such purposes.

 

[jpolster2009]

why coudnt a g5 do youtube? its just flash.... which is one of the simplest forms of animation on the web

 

[johnklos]

why coudnt a g5 do youtube? its just flash.... which is one of the simplest forms of animation on the web

Flash isn't a form of animation; it's an interpreter which mostly decodes video itself. The video can be in a number of other codecs, but because Flash generally doesn't have any sort of heavy video playback optimization or offload to video hardware (except on certain brand new Mac video chips), it's dreadfully inefficient. Obviously Quicktime is much more optimized to play video.

 

[Cory5412]

I also don't think there was a question of youtube on the G5. I watch youtube and hulu on our G5s at work all the time, the question was NetFlix.

Also, youtube, even on x86 PCs with Windows (where Flash works best) Flash is a pretty horsepower-intensive way to deliver content, and the h.264 encoding most flash videos you is also faairly horsepower intensive.

As an update on this particular concept of "Cory gets a new computer this year" -- I've decided to go ahead and skip the G5 and go for a new x86 machine for virtualization tasks. Probably more details about that later on in the lounge.