G3 400 vs G4 450 -- Which one did he take home?

[Dog Cow]

Ok, here's the story: I stopped back in the campus computer shop, as we continue from the story in this post, where I noticed a G3 two weeks ago on May 18.

This is the same shop of lore where the infamous $50 iMac incident occurred, as well as my liberation of an epic 300 Mhz desktop G3 for $30 in Oct of 2008.

Today, I have walked out of the shop with yet another Mac. As it turns out, there was a surprise waiting for me: a graphite G4 had arrived during my absence (as well as the CRT for it, I asked the price.... wait for it.... no joke, $100! WTF, man?)

I asked about the G4, and it was priced at $40. The G3 was also priced at $40.

Here we have the showdown:

Option A:

- 450 MHz G4

- No RAM

- No HD

- DVD ROM drive

- Zip 100

- $40

versus

Option B:

- 400 Mhz G3

- 128 MB RAM

- 6 GB HD

- DVD ROM drive

- Zip 100

- $40

I walked out of the shop 20 minutes ago with $40 fewer money and a used Mac. Which one did I take home in my trunk today????

I will post the answer in a day or two.

Bonus question: which one would you take home?

(PS: Oh, man! I can't wait until G5's can be had for $40!)

 

[John8520]

I would have taken the G3, mostly because I love how the B/W case looks and I have never owned one. On the other hand, I have owned four G4s and am no longer particularly interested in them.

Depending on how patient you are the B/W may be better as it has RAM and a HDD. The speed difference would be highly negligible.

 

[Dog Cow]

The G3 had a crack in the front handle, and a larger crack on the side where chunks of plastic were missing! The G4 case was intact, but quite dusty inside!

I just bought 256 MB of PC100 SDRAM ($10 total, nice!) and placed a bid on a 40 GB IDE HD, so I should get the RAM by next week, and we'll see if I win the HD.

 

[LCGuy]

Nice work, I would've also taken the G4, since RAM and HDs are pretty easy to find (just scrap an old PC for them), and its otherwise a better machine than the G3.

 

[Byrd]

Sadly B&W G3s are worht no more than $10 - 20 these days, they're just to "underpowered" to most. The $40 G4 is on the money I'd say - and upgradable to decent specs down the track.

JB

 

[Dog Cow]

Well! Some very interesting arguments for and against each machine. I will reveal the answer tomorrow, and also why I bought it!

 

[BarnacleGrim]

I have actually been wanting both lately. The G3 was, and still is a remarkable machine in terms of design and innovation. But so is the G4, and so far I have a specimen of every processor family from the 68000 to Intel except for the G4. My mother has the only G4 in the family, a PowerBook.

 

[Gorgonops]

Personally $40 sounds like way too much for either of them, but admittedly I'm in an area where you can't go fifty feet in any random direction without tripping over an old computer that, you know, isn't the right shade of blue for those kids these days.

(EDIT: If I were *really* stuck I'd say the G4 was the right choice, of course.)

 

[Dog Cow]

Better than $50 for an orange iMac, right? (btw, that orange iMac was STILL there yesterday!!!)

Anywho, I just won and paid for the 40 GB IDE drive, so I should have that plus 256 MB of RAM arriving some time next week.

I would have paid $50 for the Mac, but not much higher than that. I think that a G3 or G4 class machine is worth that much. I've got a nagging itch to go back to the shop and buy the other Mac, but I'm not 100% on it....

 

[H3NRY]

Given the choice, I'd take the G4. The B&W G3 has so many problems with the IDE disk controller that it is useless with any modern drive unless you get a PCI disk controller for it, and those cards cost a lot more than the computer. The G3 plastics are thinner and break around the screw attachment holes, also. Otherwise both are attractive Macs, and the Bondi blue color is a bit special in Mac history. The plastic shells can be mixed and matched, also, if you have both.

 

[Dog Cow]

The b&w G3 400!

To the three people who guessed correctly, congratulations! To the 9 people who guessed poorly, shame on you all! >

It was going to be the G4, but once I saw that it did not have any RAM nor hard drive, that was a real turn-off for me. I went with the G3, and decided that I'd soup it up.

Anyone who could put two and two together, and who read the iMac story would realize that this G3 wasn't for me, but for my friend. I gave him his first-ever Mac, the original bondi iMac, over 2 years ago. That Mac has since gotten even older, and I've decided to upgrade him to something newer and spiffier.

I'm going to have this thing good as new for him!

 

[Unknown_K]

Ebay didn't have any G4's under $75 locally? You paid $40 plus whatever upgrades, for that money you should be able to get a much faster G4 system locally.

 

[geeko]

I just don't think either of them are worth that much. I guess I am lucky (living in a very wealthy area), but I got my B&W G4 (upgraded) for free from the back of someone's truck, and at the recycling place I work for (in exchange for vintage macs /cool PCs/parts) I have fixed 10 towers that they were given for free, many of which are 700MHZ+. Personally I would not have paid $25 for either of them, but it is always great to give a friend a Mac, and I think it is well worth the price. (MUCH better than a $50 iMac G3, I have told the recycling place that they are not really worth the time to fix, and that they could only be able to be sold for $20-$30, so for the most part they are just scrapped xx( ) I also am in charge of pricing the macs, and the only one for sale right now that is comparable to either of these is a $75 (maybe less, can't remember) DP 500MHZ, w/ 256 (or 512, can't remember) RAM, an 80GB HDD, a keyboard and mouse, and a HUGE apple CRT monitor.

 

[Blessed Cheesemaker]

I would have taken the G3 for all the above reasons (RAM, HD, etc.) plus the fact that the G3 will also run OS 8.x.

All the G4's I've picked up (all 2 of them) have had the firmware upgraded, so that you can't run anything under 9.1 on them. I would give a little bit to find a G4 Sawtooth that I could load OS 8.6 on, but sadly, these machines are a rarity. They seem to all suffer from "premature firmware upgradation."

I guess I'll just have to suffer with my 2 UMax S900's, which can also run OS 7.5.5!

 

[jruschme]

The b&w G3 400!
To the three people who guessed correctly, congratulations! To the 9 people who guessed poorly, shame on you all! >

It was going to be the G4, but once I saw that it did not have any RAM nor hard drive, that was a real turn-off for me. I went with the G3, and decided that I'd soup it up.

Personally, I'm from the school that both were overpriced in the first place, unless this was an ebay auction and the price included shipping.

As for the 128mb RAM and 6GB disk in the G3, I find it hard to consider either as a determining factor as both are so small/inexpensive as to be considered throwaway. You, yourself, acknowleged that when you mentioned the 40gb drive and 256mb DIMM that you bought.

Two factors were never mentioned, BTW:

1) B&W ROM revision

2) Video card

For me, the B&W ROM revision is a potential dealbreaker. It's just not worth the hassle of dealing with a Rev. 1 unless you want to commit to SCSI-only, an ATA PCI card, or poor IDE performance.

As for the video card, I don't think the B&W is going to have shipped with anything better than a Rage 128 while the G4 is more than likely going to have at least an AGP Rage 128 Pro (faster card on a faster interface).

I'm one of the people who voted for the G4. Admittedly, the G3 is, out of the box, a complete system, but you're going to be replacing most of what made it "complete" anyway. The upgrade path for the G4 is much better than that of the B&W, as others have pointed out. Also, it was described as being cosmetically challenged as opposed to just dusty. About the only advantage I can see is the better support for "legacy" OS versions and ADB by the B&W.

Anyone who could put two and two together, and who read the iMac story would realize that this G3 wasn't for me, but for my friend. I gave him his first-ever Mac, the original bondi iMac, over 2 years ago. That Mac has since gotten even older, and I've decided to upgrade him to something newer and spiffier.

All the more reason to have gone with the G4. With the B&W, most of your upgrades will involve either a nominally faster processor (500mhz G3 unless you want to spend big bucks) or a G4 pull from a Yikes!, more RAM, a bigger HD, or a better video card (Radeon 7000) which is still limited by being on the PCI bus. With the G4, you could run and unsupported Leopard install with the existing CPU, add a Quartz Extreme compatible (or even CoreImage) compatible video card, etc.

IMHO, the B&W is a nice upgrade from the Bondi iMac, but the G4 would have been the better longevity move.

John

 

[Dog Cow]

I don't see why you guys are making a big deal out of the price, considering that it was my money spent, and not your money. I didn't think that $40 was too much, and in fact, I was prepared to pay more, even up to $50. Just being able to go into the shop, see the machine, and walk out with the Mac made it worth so much more than an eBay experience.

And I'm going to buy a CRT from a shop that sells them for $5 next week. I hope that $5 isn't too much too pay for a CRT.

If I had planned ahead, and known that there was a G4 there with no HD and RAM, I might have bought the necessary RAM and HD beforehand, and then gotten the G4. But the fact is, I didn't know that there was a G4 there, and when I did see it, I was going to buy it until I opened it up and saw that the RAM and HD was missing.

But that's that. This G3 is going to be a souped-up games machine!

 

[Paralel]

...I guess I am lucky (living in a very wealthy area)...

:

 

[Dog Cow]

...I guess I am lucky (living in a very wealthy area)...

Where you can get all of the $50 orange iMacs and $100 CRTs that you could possible want. :lol:

Did you know that I asked about the price of 512 MB of RAM too in that shop? I was told that I could have it for $55. 8-o

 

[geeko]

That is just crazy. Plain crazy. I get very pissed of at shops like that.

The thing is though... if the don't price things well, they might not know what they have, and they might get a MDD or early G5, and price it at $40-50.

(If they look it up on eBay though, then you will never get a good price.)