eMac 700 for $135 / Would this be OK for my parents?

[Harbourmaster]

They are both in there early 70s.

Currently they are on an 800MHz G3 Smurf running 10.3.9 with a 5 year old 18" Dell UltraSharp 1800FP. (a little Googling turns up the specs as 1280x1024@60Hz) Yes I'm sure it's an 18 " not a 19".

[iaJim]

What's not to love? For that money, even if it dies, you aren't out much! I'd do it. Do they have the desk space? They are big guys.

[Harbourmaster]

Yeah they have a HUGE old surplus SteelCase desk so space is not an issue.
I'm looking for a cheap upgrade for them but never having seen a running eMac in the flesh I don't know what the screen is like.

[threeprong]

EmAc screens are quite crsip.

At least my 4 yr old one is.

It's an eMac 700.

3p

[Paul F.]

I'd buy 10 at that price...

Go for it...

[Grateful11]

That's a good deal. I had a 700 eMac for about 2 years. Some of the 700s like mine had a fairly loud fan.

[Big Daddy Cool]

no brainer. It will take up less room than the Smurf and old CRT combo they have now. I got one for my parents (in their 60's) and they love it.

[ADent]

How much faster is that 700MHz G4 than the 800MHz G3 is it? What is the bus speed on these two machines? How much memory does the eMac have?

The eMac has a good Trinitron sceen. But if your machine has seen 24/7 use as a kiosk then the screen may suffer some. The CRT can be set to the higher resolution that the older folks like w/o the fuzzies on a LCD that the younger folk detest.

It does have and external monitor port (at least my 2nd gen 800Mhz does), but you would need a $20 mini-DVI adapter cable to use.

[Jem]

Sounds like a good deal... and I agree that the CRT may be better for them than the LCD, if they are currently running the LCD at not native resolutions (a good chance this is so for older folks).

The video GPU in the eMac is likely to be better than that in the B&W too... plus, I suspect that G3s will be dropped in the next OS release (Leopard 10.5).

The B&W is more expandible in many ways, but that is not necessarily a plus the way it is being used. The eMac is probably a better overall fit.

[Marc Anthony]

What is the point of this crossgrade? Is the G3 or the monitor failing? Spec wise, these machines would be too similar for me to consider the tradeout. Keep in mind that the G3 and G4 processor are pretty much identical in performance, with the exception of Altivec aware tasks - in short, you won't be witnessing much in the way of real world speed increases by going from a G3 800 to a G4 700. Consider a Mac Mini as a replacement.