Is my iMac G5 Power PC Obsolete?

Hi Paul,

I am in the same boat as you, and older G5 iMac that runs great, but cannot be upgraded to the latest operating system and on which the current software packages do not run. All of that said, the machine is terrific and very hard to part with.

Look at the current offerings from Apple and see if any really strike you...you have some tough choices: iMacs, MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs...decision is what are your needs and which would satisfy them the best. All have fast processors, plenty of room for memory, large storage. Display capability is really a function of the class of computer, larger you go, the better the graphics card and display. But do you like portability? The laptops are really powerful today.

I am looking at a new iMac or new MBP...trying to decide to buy now or wait a couple months and see if Apple comes out with an upgrade to those models. That is always a guessing game but with spring approaching might just hang on for a couple months and see what they announce.

Good luck making your choices.
Ralph

the iMAc is very slow on the internet, barely achieving 3Mbps downloads versus 12+ for the MacBook and an iPad on the same WLAN. Most of the time the computer is on, the cooling fans are running; is this a symptom that the machine is struggling to cope?

Probably struggling to cope with this

the 250GB hard drive is full.

OS X needs about 10 gigs of hard drive space for normal OS operations - things like virtual memory, temporary files and so on. Without this space your Mac will slow down as the OS hunts for space on the disk, files will be fragmented, also slowing things down, apps will crash and the risk of data corruption - that is damage to your files, photos, music - increases exponentially. Your first priority is to make more space on that HD. Nothing else can be done until you do. Purchase an external HD and move your Photos and Music to it. Both iPhoto and iTunes can run perfectly well with the Library on an external disk.

As to upgrading the machine: How much do you want to invest in a 6 year old machine that will be two iterations behind the OS when 10.7 is released later this year?

Regards

TD

Before turning the G5 into trebuchet ammo, you may wish to repost the question in the iMac G5 forums here:

http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=134

to get additional input from current users. You've found the iMac G4 forum instead.

The internet speed issue sounds more like a software issue than a "old computer" issue. I compared an 8-year old 1ghz Powerbook G4 (10.4.11) with wireless"g" to a MacBook Pro and an Mac Mini (both had 10.5.8 at the time) with wireless "n" on a 24MBps cable connection. All the computers reported the same speed wired. On wireless, the MBP and Mini did about 18.8MBps and the very tired Powerbook did 17.4MBps--less that a 10 percent difference.

As internet connections don't wear out with age, it could be some config issue or may third-party software on the G5 that's gumming the works. Do you have anti-virus software installed on the G5? That's can really make a mess of things.