The Virtues of a G4

Michel Munger – 2001.04.01

I don’t understand why Low End Mac readers stick with your old clones or pre-G3 computers. I’ve been using Macintoshes since 1994, and most of the time I’ve had one of the latest machines. To me, living without the latest, most powerful stuff is unthinkable.

How can somebody use a computer without the latest software? The latest software always offers the most features and functionality. Companies and developers always make progress and take advantage of the newest technologies to make your computer use easier, friendlier, and more powerful. It makes more power available at your fingertips and allows you to do things that many of us thought impossible before. The added elegance is icing on the cake.

The same applies to hardware. It gets better, bigger, and faster all the time. Today’s computer can do pretty much anything, unlike those clunky old beige boxes that sit on many of your desktops. It is 2001, folks. Get with the program, and stop looking backwards with your old clones and Performas! Upgrade to a G4 right now and enjoy today’s technology!

Resistance to change is futile. People who lived in earlier centuries fought it, but they all failed. From the steam that powered the industrial revolution to electricity, which was not widely adopted at first, evolution forced humans to change the way they look at things and modernize. Resistance never stopped change, and it never will.

As a multiprocessor G4 owner, I know about the perks and joys of using the latest. I don’t have to wait for half an hour for Photoshop to launch. I can expand my RAM up to 1.5 GB if I wish. I can stick in an additional hard disk drive tomorrow if I wish, and it will only take a couple of minutes! It has enough FireWire and USB ports to connect anything I could want. I can run Mac OS X with more speed than most of you. I can do multimedia as well as graphical design and other productive work with the same machine, while many of you have to endure delays.

Think of the possibilities. With a DVD drive, I can watch a movie on a large monitor. I can connect a great pair of speakers to the USB ports and enjoy multimedia without a single skip. Old Macs don’t have the power to do that. I can encode MP3 files at blazing speeds (from 6x to 13x) with iTunes (it supports multiprocessing and the G4 Velocity Engine). A full album takes just a few minutes to encode. Try to match that with your 68K Mac!

Modernity can’t be stopped. Hop in or you’ll miss the bus with your Performa.