Is my emac worth upgrading? Can't seem to easily find Tiger for it.

[Buzz]

Max RAM = Happy Tiger...

probably not wise to go more than pizza & beer to max eMac.
additional emphasis for Paul F.

[rgG]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:

No.

Do not spend one iota of brain power trying to decide whether to upgrade the eMac.

:agree:

[sekker]

Even adding RAM and 10.4 is not going to make that machine good for youtube.

But it WILL speed up general surfing, email, etc.

If you found a more modern, 7200 rpm hard drive, you'd also see a decent speed boost.

But the bottleneck is the combination CPU and graphics in that machine. Apple was seriously underpowered back then, and this is an education model to boot.

Just to put it into perspective - a hackintosh Dell mini 10v with a cheap external keyboard, mouse and monitor is going to be faster and would run around $300 (including a $29 SL install DVD).

[decocritter]

I read something about that graphics issue.

Safaris is about done for me now, and I am on firefox. You tube was fine until about 6 months ago.

Mainly music, surfing, email, iphoto machine.

[Paul F.]

I'd leave it at RAM...
Putting an HD in an eMac is considerably more of a pain in the rectum than the job is worth.

Scrounge up some PC133 DIMMS, and a copy of Tiger, and wring some more life out of it while you save for a better machine.

[decay]

can you find a dual g4 tower on the cheap? much easier to upgrade than an eMac. not suggesting you spend much - but you might find one maxed out for not much more than the RAM itself... video card might be better than the eMac's too.

[Blankity Blank]

TheCaber wrote: The G4 does not have the CPU muscle needed to deal with current web media (flash, streaming video), but it can handle compressed audio (MP3) and audio streaming, static web pages and email just fine.

Not true. As long as it's not starved for RAM, an eMac can be quite serviceable even for streaming video as long as you stick with the low bandwidth versions most sites offer. It's not the state of the art experience, but it's not particularly painful either. Friend of mine is saving their nickels and dimes for a Macbook, because it is time to upgrade, but till Leader Day arrives, they get along quite well with Tiger and an eMac.

Now would I spend money to upgrade an eMac? Nope. I'd grin and bear it and put every spare cent into an empty mayo jar till I had the three hundred or so bucks I needed to Craigs List something closer current, even if the slog from no bucks to a few bucks was slow and arduous. If the fish are biting, you could probably get somewhere between $75 - $125 for the eMac to put with the mayo jar money.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Blankity Blank wrote: If the fish are biting, you could probably get somewhere between $75 - $125 for the eMac

I'd like to go fishing in that hole.