Posted: 12/1/2009 2:42:36 PM EDT
| I'd like to get my wife something for Christmas that upgrades her Mac, and software that would clean up her comp, get it to run faster. I'm a PC guy don't know a hell of a lot about Mac's and their operating systems, she has an older comp with OSX 10.2 on it right now, runs slow. Like to buy her a new one, but that's not in the cards this year. Any suggestions? |
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Quoted: I'd like to get my wife something for Christmas that upgrades her Mac, and software that would clean up her comp, get it to run faster. I'm a PC guy don't know a hell of a lot about Mac's and their operating systems, she has an older comp with OSX 10.2 on it right now, runs slow. Like to buy her a new one, but that's not in the cards this year. Any suggestions? New, faster hard drive, more Ram, OS upgrade depending on her CPU, 10.4/5. Maybe a CPU upgrade, depending on machine. Of course after all of that, a new Mac Mini would be cheaper. 10.2 sucks. 10.3 is better, 10.4/5 is great. |
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A machine running OS 10.2 Jaguar is old. Not really worth sinking money into at this point unless you have no choice. For hardware, I'd max out the RAM, maybe put a faster hard disk in it, but that's it. For software, it may not handle anything more recent than OS 10.3, 10.4 at the most.
But, by the time you've spent the money to add RAM, disk space, and an updated OS, you've spent enough to buy a new netbook, or make a big dent in the price of a new Mac. |
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Quoted:
A machine running OS 10.2 Jaguar is old. Not really worth sinking money into at this point unless you have no choice. For hardware, I'd max out the RAM, maybe put a faster hard disk in it, but that's it. For software, it may not handle anything more recent than OS 10.3, 10.4 at the most. But, by the time you've spent the money to add RAM, disk space, and an updated OS, you've spent enough to buy a new netbook, or make a big dent in the price of a new Mac. This, seriously. You are looking at probably $300 or so for ram/hard drive/10.4 unless you get really lucky on eBay or prices have dropped since I was looking a while back. If she wants to stay with a Mac, a used or refurbished machine would be a better use of the money. |
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Quoted:
A machine running OS 10.2 Jaguar is old. Not really worth sinking money into at this point unless you have no choice. For hardware, I'd max out the RAM, maybe put a faster hard disk in it, but that's it. For software, it may not handle anything more recent than OS 10.3, 10.4 at the most. But, by the time you've spent the money to add RAM, disk space, and an updated OS, you've spent enough to buy a new netbook, or make a big dent in the price of a new Mac. This is what I kinda thought as well. I have a better comp (PC) than hers only becaause of my gaming addiction, hard to believe her Mac is over 7 years old (might as well be 100 as far as comps go lol!) |
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I was wondering, what does she use her Mac for? If it's just stuff like email, web, Facebook, she can do that kind of stuff on a netbook or small form factor PC running Ubuntu Linux.
E.g., from NewEgg: MSI Wind Barebones Net Top PC $149.99 Kingston 2 GB SODIMM RAM $49.99 Samsung DVD Burner $26.99 Samsung 160 GB SATA hard disk $38.99 Ubuntu Linux FREE Total: $265.96. You'd need to add a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, but the base system is pretty cheap and surprisingly capable. I built something similar last year for my MIL on MSI's Wind PC with the single-core Atom CPU, running XP Home. It's no gaming machine but she does email, web, and light office stuff on it just fine. Another nice thing is that the Wind is small, has low power consumption, and it's very quiet. |
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Check out the Apple store on their site. Scroll down and in the center of the bottom 1/3 you'll see Refurbished Macs. I just looked and they've got this for $849. They have a full 1 year warranty, which you can extend to 3 years with AppleCare, which I highly recommend. It will have OS 10.6, iLife 08 and a few other goodies.
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The new iMac's are nice. I like the Mac Mini as well and it's a great deal if you already have an LCD, Keyboard, etc. Check the refurb section as mentioned above. It'll save some cash and still carries full warrantee. It'll look brand new as well.
If she is still on 10.2, upgrading that old of a machine will not be worth it. Just like any computer now, RAM is key. No matter what you get, make sure it's got enough RAM (I like 2-4GB for most things) |
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OP, we need to get a few things figured out. What machine is it, processor speed, current OS, RAM & HD. Upper left corner of the screen, there's an Apple icon. Click on that and click about this Mac. That'll show OS version, like 10.2.6 or something... It'll show processor, say...1.0 Ghz PowerPC G4, then memory - 512MB SDRAM or similar. Next, hit the More Info button within that window. By default, the Hardware line is highlighted. This will tell you Machine Name, Model, CPU Speed,memory, even serial number. After getting this info, click on ATA on the left column to tell you what HD is in it. It might be under Serial -ATA, but I doubt it on an older machine. This will tell you capacity of the drive. On the regular finder, if you dbl click on the HD icon, usually in the upper right of the sceen, at the bottom of the screen, it will tell you how much space is remaining on the drive. Finally, click on memory - this will tell you how much RAM and what configuration the RAM situation is. Post the info here, please. For Mac RAM, i usually go to Other World Computing. For hard drives, I get them at either New Egg or Micro Center. |
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Quoted:
A machine running OS 10.2 Jaguar is old. Not really worth sinking money into at this point unless you have no choice. For hardware, I'd max out the RAM, maybe put a faster hard disk in it, but that's it. For software, it may not handle anything more recent than OS 10.3, 10.4 at the most. But, by the time you've spent the money to add RAM, disk space, and an updated OS, you've spent enough to buy a new netbook, or make a big dent in the price of a new Mac. It should run up to 10.5.8 with no problem. macsales.com has lots of options to upgrade, most of them are very inexpensive. |