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I just posted a bid on Ebay for a 12" G4 iBook - Opinions?

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Pepinno

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Apr 16, 2007
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As the title says, I just posted a bid on eBay for a G4 iBook, which has a 12" 1024x768 TFT screen, 1.25 GB RAM, 30 GB HDD, Wifi, and superdrive DVD-R.

My maximum bid is 121 Euros.

The bidding will end tomorrow. Currently, the winning bid is mine and it is at about 100 Euros.

I want the machine to play with Mac OS X (although I know the PowerPC versions of Mac OS X are not updated anymore), specially to play with it's BSD/Unix underpinnings, and because I find it to be a piece of beauty with its all-white look -- so it seems it could become a great toy of mine.

I much prefer to have a G4 iBook as a toy to play with, than some iPad or some stinky Surface tablet.

So, what do you think? Is 121 Euros for this 2005-era used machine too much? Do you think it will be fun to put it to use if I win it?

PS: I will not rise my maximum bid of 121 Euros.
 
Well, it doesn't really matter whether the price is worth it, since you've already got the bid in anyway. But 121 Euros is quite a bit more than I'd ever consider paying for one.

Speaking generally, the late G4 machines are still fairly usable, especially with all the projects that have popped up to backport newer software to PPC... things like TenFourFox and such. There are a couple shortcomings with the iBooks though. The stock hard drives are terribly slow and are a pain to upgrade, plus the 1.25GB RAM limit makes them less than ideal for OSX 10.5... it'll run, but it won't be very speedy. Tiger 10.4.11 is alright, but the tradeoff is that you won't be able to use some of the newer software which requires Leopard.
 
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XXXXXX, has recibido una sobrepuja de 2,50 EUR. No lo dejes escapar.
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Ya no eres el máximo pujador. ¡Vuelve a pujar!
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I've just been outbid. Away goes 'my' iBook. Good riddance!
 
Thats great. don't think about bid. just think about your need & your product.
 
Yeah, the unfortunate thing about G4 laptops is they typically go for much more than they're worth. That said, if you get lucky and nab one in the $50-100 range, they can be quite nice. I can't speak for the iBook G4, but the late-model TiBooks are very nice - most of the issues with the case design are worked out and it's a very nice design, quite light for its size, and they still pack a reasonable amount of horsepower - I can browse even modern websites without too much trouble in TenFourFox on my 1GHz TiBook, and it makes a fantastic writing laptop. The Aluminum PowerBooks pack even more of a punch (and you can get them in a 12" size, which is nice,) but I don't like the case as much - the lack of any solid grab points makes it too slippery for easy handling. Still, you can get up to 1.67GHz and 2GB RAM with those suckers, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
 
Hmm, what may be going on in this auction?: Just one day to go, and still at 1 Euro...

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Apple-iBook-...braucht-jedoch-bestens-erhalten-/261123299931

How many snippers do you think may be watching, to bid in the last seconds for this G4 iBook?

--

Edit to add:

Two more auctions of working G4 iBooks, currently at 1 Euro and with just one day to finish:

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Apple-Ibook-G4-/181017170531
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Apple-iBook-G4-30-7-cm-12-1-Zoll-Laptop-/230876975019

What's going on in Germany with G4 iBooks, do they have surplus or what?

--

Edit 2: Ok, maybe the reason is because in Germany they don't use QWERTY keyboard layout, that shuts them off the international market of used Mac kit, therefore the low prices. Makes sense?
 
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commodorejohn said:
Yeah, the unfortunate thing about G4 laptops is they typically go for much more than they're worth. That said, if you get lucky and nab one in the $50-100 range, they can be quite nice.
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I'm afraid the $50-100 range for an used G4 iBook is totally impractical currently.

The auction about which I opened this thread, closed at 229 EUR. Can you possibly believe it? It's like everything Mac-related has a reality distortion field surronding it which makes people lose its sanity!

pujaganadora.png
 
Yup. Like I said, you have to play the long game and wait for the one deal that isn't ridiculously overpriced and that doesn't immediately shoot up to $200+ in the first day...of course, it probably doesn't help that St. Jobs died in between now and the time I bought my PowerBook. If there's a paper in your area that takes free classified ads, you could try putting one out just to see...
 
commodorejohn said:
If you want, there's a guy on AmiBay who's selling a fairly solid iBook G4 for 100GBP.
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100 GBP is like 150 EUR.

Just yesterday I won a G4 iBook on eBay.de, for 121 EUR (as I stated in this thread's first post, that was my maximum bid and I had to intention to pay more than that for a used computer). The one I won has the RAM maxed out (1.25 GB), an upgraded HDD (160 GB), a replaced battery, Bluetooth, and a 14" TFT (but still 1024x768).

ibook1.png


ibook2.png


It's cons are: no DVD-RW and it comes with a german QWERTZ keyboard (which is nice, now that Spain is a colony of Germany I can get my typing skills up to the requirements of the new times... hehehe).
 
Congrats! Those old PPC machines are nice. If you get tired of OS X, there are several other operating systems for it, like FreeBSD (probably Net- and OpenBSD too, but I haven't tried it) and perhaps MorphOS. And Linux.
 
Just wondering, can't you change the keyboard layout via system preferences? While the labels would be wrong on the keys, as long as you know how to type you would be able to input easier.
 
Compgeke said:
Just wondering, can't you change the keyboard layout via system preferences? While the labels would be wrong on the keys, as long as you know how to type you would be able to input easier.
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Yes, of course. I will probably do that, as I need the "ñ" character which usually has its own key in Spanish keyboards.
 
The iBook G4 is already in my hands. I'll post pictures soon (when I have some more free time).

First gotcha: Mac OS X does not allow to select a key index other than 1 for the WEP password in it's wifi configuration. Indeed, I have my home's wifi access point with a key index other than 1 for the WEP password.

How come have I been able to access my wifi with a 486 running Windows 95 with an Orinoco Silver PCMCIA card, but I'm not able to access the same wifi with a spanking Apple it-just-works UNIX-based laptop? Grrrrr!

Other than that, I've reinstalled over the German version of OS X 10.3.5 to get UI language in English, as the seller was nice enough to include the 3 system disks, plus the OS X Tools disk. So far, it's a nice system all around.
 
Pepinno said:
How come have I been able to access my wifi with a 486 running Windows 95 with an Orinoco Silver PCMCIA card, but I'm not able to access the same wifi with a spanking Apple it-just-works UNIX-based laptop? Grrrrr!
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You're holding it wrong.
 
@Pepinno: you shouldn't be using WEP, it is unsecure. Use WPA / WPA2 instead, if possible.
 
tingo said:
@Pepinno: you shouldn't be using WEP, it is unsecure. Use WPA / WPA2 instead, if possible.
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No possible, I'm using a Linksys WAP11 of 2002 vintage. It only supports WEP-64 and WEP-128.

I'm running it with MAC filtering and an index other than 1 for the WEP key. So far so good, but then Mac OS X happened.
 
This post brought to you by my "new" iBook G4 running ("period"-correct) Mac OS X 10.3.9 and Firefox 2.0.0.20, while playing iTunes 4.6! :D

I've also installed NoScript 1.10 for Firefox and the Flash Player plugin 9.0 (highest version compatible with OSX 10.3).

Man, these PPC CPUs are weak! Mine is a G4 @ 1.33 GHz and it feels like a Pentium-III @ 666 MHz.

I've temporarily hooked up to my ethernet LAN another DSL router just to use it's more modern wifi capabilities, so I could get into the Internet wirelessly with the iBook.

I'm going to try now Mozilla SeaMonkey and OpenOffice...

I'm in the process of obtaining a copy of OS X 10.5 (latest version compatible with PPC processors), where I plan to try Microsoft Office 2004, Firefox 3.6, Flash 10, Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe InDesign CS4 and Acrobat Pro 9.0.
 
Pepinno said:
Man, these PPC CPUs are weak! Mine is a G4 @ 1.33 GHz and it feels like a Pentium-III @ 666 MHz.
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That's funny, my TiBook @ 1GHz feels faster than my P3 laptop @ 1.2GHz...and it's only got half the L2 cache and PC133 RAM. Perhaps the L3 cache plays a part in that...
 
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