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Apple Power Mac G5 Desktop M9031LL/A (1.80-GHz PowerPC G5, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, DVD-R/CD-RW Drive)

Apple Power Mac G5 Desktop M9031LL/A (1.80-GHz PowerPC G5, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, DVD-R/CD-RW Drive)

List Price: $2,100.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Outstanding performance with no compromises
Review: I've been running my 1.8 Ghz G5 24/7 for about a month now. It serves as my primary work machine and as a database-driven webserver. It also serves as a wireless basestation, sharing it's ethernet connection to the net wirelessly. It has performed flawlessly and quickly since the beginning. I have only ever needed to restart it after updating system software.

I have 1.5 GB of RAM, which really opens the throttle. It is quiet, too, which makes working in the office a pleasure. You won't be disappointed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Outstanding performance with no compromises
Review: I've been running my 1.8 Ghz G5 24/7 for about a month now. It serves as my primary work machine and as a database-driven webserver. It also serves as a wireless basestation, sharing it's ethernet connection to the net wirelessly. It has performed flawlessly and quickly since the beginning. I have only ever needed to restart it after updating system software.

I have 1.5 GB of RAM, which really opens the throttle. It is quiet, too, which makes working in the office a pleasure. You won't be disappointed.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Add $130 to your price...
Review: Note that this model ships with the 10.2 version of the OS rather than the latest (and much improved) 10.3 version. There's no upgrade. You'll probably want to buy the full version of the OS (retail $129).

Otherwise an impressive, quiet machine.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The G5 does not support Virtual PC
Review: The G5 does not support Virtual PC. If you want to run dual operating systems, do not buy this computer! I'm stuck running two computers now.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Personal Supercomputer
Review: The G5 looks like something out of a sci-fi flick, and performs even better. The really scary thing is the surface is just being scratched on this thing, with few programs compiled around its 64-bit processor. More on that in a minute ...

Despite being a beast of a machine (nearly 60 lbs!) and probably the complex computer Apple has ever sold, it is a breeze to set it up and get it going (remember this is a Mac!) I bought it with a seperate Airport Extreme Card that was trivial to install. The G5 even comes with an external Airport antenna.

The included keyboard is very minimal and can take some getting used to. The keys are so tight that I often found myself hitting F13 when trying to hit the delete key. The mouse is a classic Apple mouse, i.e. one button and no scroll wheel. Personally I like Apple mice because they are very natural to use, even though it would seem like two buttons and scroll wheel could be added withot upsetting the ergonomic...

The G5 is amazingly quiet ... most of the time. I have it sitting just a few feet from a P4 2.4GHz and the difference in sound is amazing. I have got the G5 to be noisy though, while installing Panther, and it was incredibly loud then. Nothing else I've done has been able to get it to be quiet. The superdrive is a little noisy, though really no more than most high speed optical drives.

My G5 came with Jaguar pre-installed, but with a full retail version of Panther included in the box. I was very pleased with this, as most computers (not just Apple) only come with "restore" disks. I could write a ton just about Panther, but I will keep it short. I setup the G5 with Jaguar then immediately installed Panther. It took less than 20 minutes to install it, which is amazingly fast (no doubt because the hard drive was nearly empty!)

I was also pleased to see that the G5 software bundle included a Photoshop patch to optimize Photoshop (7.0.1) for use with the G5 cpu. You could download this from Adobe's website, but it was cool that they included it anyways. I didn't run Photoshop on the G5 without the patch, so I can't really say what the net effect of the patch is, but Photoshop on my G5 is so much faster than Photoshop on my P4 ... there is no comparison!

iTunes and iDvd are also very speedy on the G5. I could rip CDs to 256 kbps AAC at speeds over 16x. Again this blows away my P4. I was also able to make a dvd of my wedding, using a dv recording of the 15 minute ceremony, a 10 minute slideshow of pictures (made with iPhoto), and more pics and music for menus. iDvd made it a breeze to put together, and burned the dvd in less than 30 minutes. I made a similar project once using a friend's G4 and it took almost three times as long.

Finally, when it comes to picking your G5, I must recommend the 1.8 GHz as being the best bang-for-the-buck. The 1.6 GHz version has notable downgrades in comparison (no pci-x, no ddr 400, etc.) The dual 2GHz is virtually identical to the 1.8 GHz version, but having dual processors. Also, I recommend sticking with the cheaper NVidia graphics card. The ATI cards are more highly regarded, but most of that is for their superior DirectX 9 implementation. DirectX 9 is a Windows technology, so it is meaningless on a Mac. Everything on a Mac uses lots of OpenGL, and NVidia is superior on OpenGL. So the NVidia card is really better than the ATI 9600 that is available, though it is cheaper. The ATI 9800 probably outperforms the NVidia, courtesy of having twice the amount of memory, but it is $350 more.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sleek, fast, and quiet
Review: This is an amazing machine. Got one for my office and it is virtually silent. It is left on 24 hrs a day and it is never heard except for the hard disk.

Opening the machine to install RAM or an airport card is easy. The inside is AMAZINGLY well engineered and beautiful. There is no need for any tools to install RAM or an airport card.

You won't be disappointed.


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