Dual Or Single G5?

[Dawn]

I'm contemplating retiring my old beige G3 and jumping right to G5 after seeing the dramatic drop in price on the 1.8GHz G5 1GB RAM 160GBhd with the Superdrive (I can now get for around $1700!). Its the single processor.
Is this a good machine and should I grab it while they are left or should I find a top G4 dual for a similar price? Or any suggestions? thanks :)
Oh, and also does a heavy regular viewsonic monitor work with the new G5?

[acme.mail.order]

Unless you're doing work that will benefit from a second processor all it will do is impress your geeky friends.

Examples of processor-intensive work are: digital video processing, webserving (commercial-grade, not personal stuff), substantial database work that isn't dependent on disk access, heavy spreadsheet calculations (financial/scientific modelling) that have you reaching for the coffee machine, compiling programs or massive amounts of work with Photoshop.

Beige G3 -> G5 will be such a huge jump in itself, unless you're regularly going for lunch while the machine chews on things you'll probably not notice the second processor not being there. It's roughly like a Volkswagen Beetle (original) to a Ferrari, the second G5 upgrades it to a Lamborghini.

I'd grab it while you can!

[Dawn]

thanks! I can't believe the thing has dropped that much...I thought maybe something was faulty with that model...
you're right, I've only ever worked with a singleG3 and less so I will be so more then satisfied for sure with the speed (and space) alone!

[trevor]

Originally posted by Dawn
Oh, and also does a heavy regular viewsonic monitor work with the new G5?

Yes, the G5's video cards from Apple have both a DVI and an ADC output, but they include a DVI-VGA adapter in the box. Presumably your ViewSonic monitor uses VGA, so you'll have to use the adapter, but it works very well.

Trevor

[mclbruce]

I see that you are interested in the dual processor G4. I guess I'd take a single processor G5 over a DP G4 just because there are so many other improvements in the G5.

I just added a processor to my older Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) with almost no other change in the computer. I was ready to sell the computer before but now I want to keep it for another year. The biggest improvement is the performance using my iSight camera in iChat AV. Adding CD's to my music collection using iTunes also improved a great deal.

Because of my recent experience I think you may want to consider a dual processor G5. You have to decide if $700.00 is worth another year of enjoying the computer, say 4 or 5 years instead of 3 or 4.