Why do people even bother with upgrading these machines? The situation is so much different than it was 5 or 10 years ago, it is not worth upgrading these old machines. But hey, waste your money all you want, not my problem. I'll sit back and laugh at you while i play the latest games on my shiney new mac pro.

That's a little harsh.

I could upgrade my 1.25 Ghz Mirror Door G4-DP and add some memory and maybe a larger drive for less than $500. $1k if I went for the dual processor. OK an iMac is in the same price range but if you need multiple drives, some slots, and don't have the $2.5k for a new Mac Pro it could be a reasonable alternative.

We're not all made of money.

Some of the dual upgrades cost more than a complete Mac mini? I have a Sonnett 1.4ghz with 2mb level 3 cache purchased some years ago for $250. It was at the time one of the top single CPU upgrades but still very expensive.
I can't see dropping this money in a CPU upgrade today with the speed of the new Macs. It just does not make sense.

I can see where a person may want to upgrade just the processor. For example, I have a couple of old G3/G4 towers that I would love to pass down to my childern. They are young, Pre-K and 1st grade. They have some games they play and visit the usual kid sites to play on. This would be a good fit. But at $399 that price is just to high. Maybe if I could get two for that price....

Well, upgrading can make sense.

I agree that these particular upgrades are pricey, however some of the cheap G4 upgrades (1.0 to 1.5 GHz usually) can give an impressive performance boost for a low price. As Geoduck said, some of us need the extra drive bays and expansion slots but don't need the power of a Mac Pro.

Upgraded systems can be very good for office work and administration, or networking.

Somewhere in that time period is the last set of machines that can actually boot into Mac OS 9. (Not Classic, the G5's can do Classic inside Mac OS X.)

So there's greybeards around that _need_ Mac OS 9.

Quote

felixgardian wrote:
Why do people even bother with upgrading these machines? The situation is so much different than it was 5 or 10 years ago, it is not worth upgrading these old machines. But hey, waste your money all you want, not my problem. I'll sit back and laugh at you while i play the latest games on my shiney new mac pro.

Why do people fix a 10-year-old car that gets poor gas mileage rather than buy a brand-new car? From a total cost of ownership, it might make sense to ditch the old car, but some people cannot afford to do that because of the up-front cost.

Just because you can afford a "shiny new Mac Pro," don't think that everyone can. I certainly cannot.

Some may have quite a bit invested in cards and drives that can't be moved to a new Mac Pro. It would be like having a custom paint job on your '69 Firebird.

As others have said, some people need to use OS 9. Please don't say that every bit of software for OS 9 is available for OS X, especially at a reasonable price. I used Graphing Calculator under OS 9. I bought the upgraded version--a simple version came with the Mac. When it finally came out for OS X, it cost $100 and there was no upgrade price for previous users. It wasn't critical to my business and I could continue to use it in Classic on my iMac G4, so I've not bought the upgrade.

The market will decide if this product is worthwhile.

I still use OS 9 for some audio apps that I can't use in OSX.

Hi folks,
I will take a closer look at this "shiny new upgrade" (to cite one of my critic fore-talkers)

It is - no doubts - a very price thing in every colour it comes, but I think, it might be worth at least some of the money, if not all. I have a fine working Digital Audio G4 - which is already a big bunch of upgrades. I'am considering spicing it up another notch... Call me mad, I shurely am - but this is great fun. I want to see how this baby rocks - or if it sucks.

By the way... thatÒ‘s great fun that a ultimate monster like the much more pricy Mac Pro wonÒ‘t give to a nerdy upgrader like me

My english sucks? Visit http://www.spassamdienstag.de if you want to try your German.

I'd love to upgrade my G4 MDD that has only one processor with a dual 7448 card. Unfortunatly there is no such upgrade available for the MDD. I hope there soon will be an upgrade.

I am researching the upgrade and ran across this site. I am really tired of spending $2,500 to $3,500 bucks on new machines. I try to get the top of the line at the time only to find that the tech change outstrips me. Right now if I spend under $800.00 to upgrade my 1999 G4, including the 7448 2ghz processor, some memory and a 16X Superdrive, I will have a machine that will suit my photo and video needs nicely. This sure beats buying a Mac Pro at $2,700 and then having to buy a new monitor because I cannot get an adaptor for my View Sonic. The G4 upgrade will outperform my eMac which is 3 years old (which I cannot upgrade!!).