Sure, tons of 800 MHz and faster Macs have left Cupertino, but not
as many as the number of slower Macs people have bought. There are
millions of slower "New World" Macs, such as B&W G3s and slot loading iMacs, not to mention the countless
other PCI Power Macs and clones. Most of these have been left behind
by not only the 800 MHz G4, but also by the now shipping dual 1.25 GHz
machines.
Luckily, Sonnet and others have come up with new upgrades to keep us
from having to buy new computers. One good example is the Sonnet
Crescendo/PCI G4 inside the 7300 I'm writing this on.
It's currently a 7300 G4/800 with 1 GB of RAM. I would call
this amount of RAM a luxury, but it does help when your running a lot
of RAM hungry applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Quark.
As for the upgrade card, it comes with the 7455 variant of the G4,
which comes with L2 and L3 cashes. Everything feels really fast and a
lot smoother, even though there had been a 400 MHz G3 in the 7300
before this upgrade.
Installation was fast and simple: Just install the software and swap
out the cards.
Now that the G4 card is in there and were running hard and fast,
OS X is going to be the next step. I definitely think that this
card is worth its US$400 price. It feels as fast as a new Mac and is
cheaper.
If your shopping for a new Mac, consider this option, but keep an
eye out on the rumors - if there's a new Power Mac based on a faster G4
or the new IBM chip coming in January, wait for them so the prices will
drop even lower on 7500s
and similar models.
This is just a hint: Baucom
Computers has great deals on PCI Macs. And don't forget to put in
at least 256 MB of RAM.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
