Yesterday Andrew Fishkin shared his experiences with ultra-cheap
Windows PCs in Just How Bad Is a
$300 Windows PC?, saying that his experience has taught him
that a $300 Windows PC is actually a pretty good bargain. He then
went on to describe how he turned a recent purchase of two such
machines into workhorses for his law office.
I fully respect Andrew's perspectives on how Windows PCs serve
his needs better than Macs. I wanted to check his comments,
however, with a view from "the other side" about how the same
bargains can be found in Macs.
"What? Since when did Apple start selling Macs for $300?"
Then don't, of course. I'm speaking of a used Mac that is still
utterly serviceable. This is Low End Mac, after all - you should
have expected it.
There are plenty of Macs out there that are completely useable -
even machines that, just a few years ago, were cutting-edge. One of
the core philosophies of Low End Mac is that these machines can
and should be kept in service until they simply give up the
ghost.
Thanks to many of our sponsors and advertisers, finding these
so-called low-end Macs isn't very difficult, but there are many
other ways to come by them.
I recently purchased a Power Mac
G4/933 MHz (2002 Quicksilver) from a local school that had
upgraded, and I got a true bargain. This Quicksilver came with a 60
GB hard drive, 768 MB RAM, a SuperDrive, and Mac OS X 10.3
"Panther." It also came with an Apple Pro Keyboard (the older style
with black keys) and an Apple Pro Mouse (again the older black
single-button model). I paid the school $250 for this gem.
Now, the Quicksilver was eminently useable as-is. Had I chosen
to, I might have set it up just as it stood and had plenty of
computer for what I wanted it for - and much more computer than
many - such as my wife, sister, mother, or mother-in-law (all of
whom use Macs) - would need. It plugged right into the 19" LCD
monitor that I already had, and it was up and running.
Unlike Andrew's experience, I found the Apple Pro keyboard to be
a great keyboard; I even replaced the Logitech keyboard I had on my
desk with it.
I prefer a two-button mouse, but since I already had one of
these, that was no problem. The Quicksilver has two USB ports and
two FireWire ports, and the Pro keyboard has two USB ports on it
(it serves as a hub), so as it stood I had enough ports for the
necessities with some room left over.
And while Windows XP just devastates RAM - most users I know
would find 768 MB to be somewhat sluggish - Tiger (OS X 10.4)
runs quite comfortably with that much, so Panther would not have
been a problem.
Since I like to tinker, however, I did do some tweaking. I got a
USB card for $15 that added five more USB ports. I added a second
hard drive (another 60 GB) for $25. And I happened to have a spare
license of OS X 10.4 on hand (the OS X "family pack" is a
real bargain!), so I installed Tiger.
So now I'm out $290 - still below Andrew's threshold - and I'm
flying with plenty of RAM and an even faster operating system.
Next, I surfed over to the Low End
Mac Swap List. I unloaded my recently acquired license for
Panther for $25. (I'm also thinking of selling the older Pro Mouse
there for a few dollars.) And I picked up a 15" Apple LCD Studio
Display for $70. This display had a broken foot, so it was another
true bargain. I was able to support it without any trouble, and
both it and the other LCD are driven by the Quicksilver's NVIDIA
GeForce 4 128 MB AGP video card, which supports DVI. Of course, if I
wanted more video options there are plenty of 64 MB and 128 MB PCI
graphics cards I could drop in.
Let me jump back to Andrew's bargain PC. Please notice that he
spent $300 on the base PC, but had to put a significant amount in
to get it to where he felt like it was ready for use. Here's how he
breaks down his costs:
- PC: $300
- Video card: $100
- RAM: $50
- Wireless card: $17
- Keyboard: ~$30
- Mouse: ~$15
- Total: ~$512
Even if we assume that the two LCDs he spoke of were already in
his possession - a $260+ assumption - then we're still talking
about a pretty big investment. Compare that to my buy:
- Quicksilver: $250
- 60 GB HD: $25
- USB Card: $15
- 15" Display: $70
- Panther license: -$25
- Total: $335
That's with a display. Add the cost of a used LCD to
Andrew's mix, and his cost closes in on $600.
You will argue, of course, that Andrew bought a machine with a
much faster CPU - as much as 2 GHz faster in direct
clock-speed comparisons. But this isn't a fair comparison, since
the chip architecture and the operating system are different enough
to make the chip speed a poor benchmark.
That generation of Power Macs is highly upgradeable. Off the
shelf, there is room for up to 1.5 GB of RAM (three slots, each
holding up to 512 MB), up to four hard drives, and a Zip drive.
With four PCI slots, there's plenty of room for all sorts of
additional upgrades - add a faster IDE interface, additional video
capability, or input options for external peripherals.
Plus there are a number of processor upgrades. For under $200
you could have a 1.2 GHz G4 processor driving one of these, or for
about the cost of the difference between the two systems you could
be in the 1.4-1.6 GHz range. For only $400 you could have a 2.0 GHz
G4, and for $429-$629 you could get dual-processor G4s from 1.6-1.8
GHz. (The fastest G4s Apple ever sold were 1.67 GHz
PowerBooks.)
Combining that scale of upgrade path with the longevity of Apple
hardware and there is a lot of computer in a Mac. Even a low-end
Mac. 
