Should I buy a used 12″ G4 Powerbook as a stopgap machine?
My 1.5 Ghz 12″ G4 PowerBook runs Leopard beautifully. I’ve got the RAM maxed at 1.25 GB, and I did have to replace the battery after the original’s life dwindled to just 15 minutes or so. The latest iMovie can’t be installed on it, let alone run (if you have the new iLife you can download the previous version of iMovie instead); the current Garage Band is pretty sluggish. I’ve had no problems with any other software. ITunes, iPhoto, and Photoshop Elements 6, as well as less resource-intensive software like browsers and Mail, all run fine. It’s rumored that the upcoming Snow Leopard Mac OS X release will be Intel-only, if that matters to you.
I’m commenting using my primary machine: a 12″ 867MHz G4 Powerbook with 1.12 GB of RAM, running 10.5.3. It’s fine. Flash is, as has been mentioned above, not the best, but otherwise it’s been a champ. I’ve dropped it several times and, while somewhat dented, it just keeps on keeping on, and is used hours and hours a day. If you really just want to surf a bit, play some tunes, etc. then it’s completely solid for that, even at 867 Mhz. I’m sure the faster ones would be more pleasing to you. New batteries go for about $100, last I bought one. I got a free one once, though, because there was a recall… you should check, if you go ahead and buy the 12″, to see if its battery happens to qualify for a replacement from Apple. Leopard is, as I said, fine. No translucent menu bar for me, due to lack of horsepower, but that’s OK. Just be sure to max out the RAM. You don’t want to be running it at 512 or 640 or whatever came stock in the model you buy. This will probably entail purchasing a singl
