Apple Power Mac Desktop M8666LL/A (933-MHz PowerPC G4, 256 MB RAM, 60 GB hard drive)

Customer Reviews:

Won me over .... again.......2002-07-07

I use a windows machine at my office but I've always had a Mac around at the house. It was time to buy a new machine and I thought it might be time to "go Windows" but then I saw the G4 at an Apple store. WOW. The easy of use of iMovie and iPhoto made me do a double take. You won't know how easy and powerful this machine is until you use it. The tools like iDVD, iPhoto, and iMovie are amazing. The kids all want Macs now (oldest son has a 1.2Ghz PC) so they too can do all the cool stuff. Pair this up with iTools....WOW. I look forward to coming home to use my Mac having used my windows XP machine all day.
My rebate came back quickly and I've had NO trouble with the machine what so ever.

The best digital hub on the market.......2002-06-09

...The primary reason I purchased this computer is because I was never really happy with what I was able to do with my DV Camcorder. It shot pretty good video, but short of plugging it into my TV there was little I could do to share what I shot. I've had an iBook (2001 dual USB, 500mhz G3) for a year now, and have always been very impressed with its digital video editing capabilities (iMovie is awesome), but after editing the video, all I could really do was burn the video on a CD as a Quick Time movie. While the QT movies worked well and looked good on the computer, they really did not offer the quality look I was looking for at full screen, and required a computer with Quick Time for play back. The Power Mac G4 933 seemed like the perfect solution. With its DVD Superdrive (writes DVD, CD-R, and CD-RW, reads DVD and all CD media) and additional iDVD software it seemed like the perfect solution. I really have to say that thus far it has really lived up to what I expected. When I purchased my G4 it had a faulty Superdrive (would not read DVD's). After speaking with Apple's tech support, and taking it to my local Apple Retail store (in ten years, this was the first Apple computer I ever had to take in for servicing), I had it back in two days with a new Superdrive and it has worked perfectly. The quality of the video once converted to MPEG-2 (the standard used for commercial DVD players and movies) is beyond what I expected, and playback has been without a hitch on home DVD players. A word to the wise: the DVD's may not be recognized by old cheap DVD players (a cheap 4 year old GE DVD player would not recognize the disc). Over all, this is the answer to anyone's dream that never thought they would be able to edit quality video for play back on home DVD players on their computer.

This is also one very fast machine. Most PC users will scoff at a 933Mhz processor, but while Mhz does matter more then Steve Jobs wants the world to think, you really cannot compare a G4 to a Pentium 4. The system architecture and operating systems are very different. Suffice to say, it you're running OSX this computer will fly. I've been running OSX on my iBook ever since version 10.1 came out (about 7-8 months now) and can honestly say that it (the OS) has NEVER crashed on me. Very, very stable.

As far as games go,it runs very well (although many hardcore PC gamers may not be happy with the average frame rates I get in Quake 3-about 90FPS with the stock GeForce4MX and 512MB of ram, 32bit color and textures, and all quality setting at the highest setting, and 1024x768 resolution). Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs smooth as silk and looks gorgeous. Unlike many of today's PC's, all desktop Macs (excluding iMacs ofcourse)have 4xAGP slots so you can always upgrade your graphics cards.

Despite the faulty DVD superdrive (and especially since it only took Apple two days to replace it) I can recommend this computer with a clear conscience. For those interested in photo editing there is a down side. As anyone that uses OSX knows, the printer drivers need allot of improvement, however, switching back and forth between OSX and Classic is painless, so when you need to print photos just do it in Classic.

To hell with Microsoft, get a Mac.......2002-02-23

When I first told my wife that we should dump our WINtel machines for an Apple, she thought I finally went off the deep end. She had become very trained by Microsoft and remembered what Apple was like about in the mid 80s. And then I took her to the Apple Store at the West Farms mall in Hartford.

What caught my eye about Apple this time around was the fact that Mac OS X in FreeBSD UNIX with some eye candy on top. You can BURN CDs and DVDs, make MP3s, hook up your digital camera or video camera, and edit photos right out of the box. If you're familiar with Linux, you know what a challenege this can be.

The Mac OS X comes with its own firewall and is pre-hardened. The average homer may not care too much about security, but this really _nice_ feature caught my attention.

Warning - GeekSpeek: If you're a hardcore UNIX person, like myself, you will appreciate that FreeBSD is part of Mac OS X. NFS, NIS, Samba -- all UNIX commands and features are right here at your fingertips. You have 8 shells to pick from. Shell scripts, perl, and python will run with no modifications. And, even though Apple doesn't mention it, that SuperDrive does DVD-RW also.

Remember when you were first introduced to Windows. You had quite a learning curve to go through. With Apple, you also have a learning curve, but not as bad as you think. Actually, it was quite fun and easier.

People are under the impression that Apple is incompatible with everything. NOT TRUE. In the past, Apple use to be proprietary but they have managed to do a 360, and now Microsoft is incompatible with the world.

If you need MS Office, the Office version for Mac OS X will blow you away. Redesigned from the ground up, Office for Mac OS X does things you will never see in Windows. The WINtel platform can't support these features.

Overall, I've been extremely happy with this machine. The speed will blow you away. I haven't had a single driver issue -- none. I haven't had to worry about security patches or service packs. And graphics, it makes HDTV boring!

My wife lives in front it nowadays. I have to schedule time to use the machine. We've started buying CDs in bulk because she's constantly burning music CDs to take on trips, for when she goes walking, or exercises. She can hook up the digital camera, Apple automatically downs the pictures, allows immediate editing, and she can drop them in an email in 10 minutes. She burned her first DVD yesterday. She hooked up the video camera, Apple automatically downed the pictures, presented them for editing (with NO ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE NEEDED), and in 1 hour she had a really cool DVD to distribute to family and friends.

To me, the nicest thing about Apple is that I don't get phone calls at work from my wife complaining about Blue Screens of Death, or having to reboot the machine because it locked up.

If you still have doubts after reading this review, do yourself a favor and go to an Apple Store. They'll let you play with the machines, surf the Net, play with the iPod, digital cameras, etc. If you want to see a demonstration, they'll do it. When we visited, we interrogated the poor salesperson for 1 hour with an intense round of Q&A. I was impressed that Apple sales people weren't condescending towards my wife. I can't tell you how many times I've seen PC people do that, and in front of me.

Once you go Apple, you'll wonder why you didn't make the transition sooner.

I'm a PC Convert! Mac Forever!.......2002-02-22

I have used and tinkered with PCs all my life, but have hardly touched (let alone owned) a Macintosh. When the new iMac was announced I was greatly excited to get a Mac with a Superdrive and flat panel system for such low cost! Then I found out the waiting list was over a month and I was hungry for a new computer now.

So, I purchased the G4 933 with a 17 inch Flat Panel display so with rebate the price isnt bad at all for what you get, which is alot! G4 933 GHz processor, Superdrive, lots of RAM, big 60 GB hard drive, tons of expandibility.

First of all, the speed and power of this system blew my mind! Although you cant directly compare PCs to Macs, I can just tell you Applications open in a snap with Mac OS X running at 933 MHz, when they would still be churning away with the hourglass on XP with 1.5GHz Pentium. The computer is soooo easy to use, I plugged in my digital camera and my Sharp DV camcorder, and boom! I can do anything with them with no hassle of drivers or learning complicated software. iMovie and iDVD are two of the best applications I have ever used, combine this with a Superdrive and you'll be putting out low budget movies in your spare time! This computer was enough to convert me from my PC to using this Mac almost exclusively, and it will do the same for you I guarantee!

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