Yes, but you have to consider that a miniscule proportion of the
population actually knows the real performance differences between CPUs.
Many people I've met (and by many, I mean most) only judge
responsiveness as a measurement of speed, and this, thankfully, can be
fudged by adding an SSD, due to the major speed boosts in random reads
that SSDs provide. For instance, my 300 MHz iBook feels like a speed
demon right now compared to my 800 MHz iMac G4, which has an old 60 GB
hard drive.
Heck, I've asked people what brand of laptop they have, and they have to
physically check the back in order to tell me… [facepalm]. And they're
not sure what version of Windows they're running, obviously.
Another thing to consider is the demands put on the system itself. Most
people I know demand very little from their computers – maybe word
processing, email, and Facebook, with YouTube as optional. And while
Flash has left PPC behind, HTML5 continues to support it. On my Pismo,
HTML5 YouTube videos can run fairly well, and even my clamshell can play
mobile YouTube videos without any problems.
Even long-time PC junkies I've met have been wooed by old Macs. One
particularly ornery PC fanatic (thought his MSI with an i3 was way
better than any Mac) eventually broke down and convinced his parents to
buy an iMac G3.
Then there's the cost. Personally, I've seen iMac G4s – good, working
ones – go for $100 on eBay. And then I've seen them go for $400 with a
few upgrades (like RAM and Leopard). I've seen iBook clamshells go for
$50, and then I've seen the same model (300 MHz) sell for over $300 with
a new battery, hard drive, RAM, and OS X Panther (no CD). The total cost
of those upgrades could not have been $250 – maybe $89 for the HD (my
CF-IDE was $79), $20 for the RAM, $40 for the battery, and nothing for
Panther. Throw a YoYo on there, and you've got $210 worth of iBook
that's selling for over $300. Make it a $100 base iBook price (over the
average), and you're still making at least $30 each computer, which in
volume will start to add up.
Now, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe it's not this simple. But if you
add up the numbers and aren't looking to turn a huge profit (which I'm
not), it might be a cool way to earn cash on the side.
Obviously, I'm going to cautiously test the waters with a clamshell or
something. I'll be sure to report back what happens.
Austin Leeds
Sent from my iBook Clamshell
Bruce Johnson wrote:
On Jun 17, 2011, at 1:24 AM, Matevž Markovič wrote:
Guys, I agree with Jonas Ulrich. I use my PowerMac MDD Dual 1.25 for my own
research into theory of numbers and it is performing very well! So far it
had over 900 hours of computing time in last few months, and it still
performs well.
Well THAT covers 0.00001% of the potential market! 8-P
The issue is NOT whether these systems are useful or capable of doing tasks,
but whether they would be competitive in an environment where they would be
competing against newer, faster, Winboxes more capable for general things like
watching videos and such stuff.
And frankly you're not going to compete against those. I can routinely get an
essentially new Winbox for $300-$400 running Win7 with modern multi-core cpus.
(Watch woot, they have them name-brand boxes all the time with AMD cpus.)
Or look here:
<http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=SYS>
I can get a core 2 duo system for $170. There are a half-dozen Athlon systems
for under $200.
I"m not pronouncing any judgement on the relative merits of OS X versus Windows
here, but these are the cold economic facts: these systems are much higher
performance than any G4, ever, straight out of the box.
Now some of them might be candidates for Hacks, which would be another thing
entirely, but selling hacks can get you into trouble, just ask Psystar...
In an environment where G5 systems are selling for as little as $150, and even
early Intel macs are coming down to that $400 level, a G4 after the costs of
upgrading simply cannot sell for enough to cover it's costs.
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