12-18-2009, 03:06 PM
I'd go with a new machine, personally. Even the cheapest intel iMac you can find will be worlds faster than their current machine in every way.
Of course, it's up to you and what you want to spend (both in terms of time and hassle). You could get a 512mb chip of ram for about $35 (plus fast shipping) http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/mem...MHz_800MHz and another $30 or so for a new optical drive, but you still end up with a 5 year old machine that's only going to be marginally faster that it was before the upgrade. A faster hard drive will help the speed, but I haven't looked recently to see how difficult that would be to replace.
For me, spending any money to upgrade their current machine feels like throwing good money after bad. You could spend the $75 or so now, and just hope that the machine doesn't die soon, or you could take pre-emptive action now and get them into a new computer. I realize that of the two options, one is $75, and one is closer to $1000, so that may be your deciding factor. I'm all for keeping old machines going as long as possible (have a g4 tower that we just recently retired as our office server), but at some point, the risk of the machine dying unexpectedly outweighs the benefit of waiting as long as possible to get something newer...
Of course, it's up to you and what you want to spend (both in terms of time and hassle). You could get a 512mb chip of ram for about $35 (plus fast shipping) http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/mem...MHz_800MHz and another $30 or so for a new optical drive, but you still end up with a 5 year old machine that's only going to be marginally faster that it was before the upgrade. A faster hard drive will help the speed, but I haven't looked recently to see how difficult that would be to replace.
For me, spending any money to upgrade their current machine feels like throwing good money after bad. You could spend the $75 or so now, and just hope that the machine doesn't die soon, or you could take pre-emptive action now and get them into a new computer. I realize that of the two options, one is $75, and one is closer to $1000, so that may be your deciding factor. I'm all for keeping old machines going as long as possible (have a g4 tower that we just recently retired as our office server), but at some point, the risk of the machine dying unexpectedly outweighs the benefit of waiting as long as possible to get something newer...