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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Personal Supercomputer, November 10, 2003
The G5 looks like something out of a sci-fi flick, and performs even better. The really scary thing is the surface is just being scratched on this thing, with few programs compiled around its 64-bit processor. More on that in a minute ... Despite being a beast of a machine (nearly 60 lbs!) and probably the complex computer Apple has ever sold, it is a breeze to set it up and get it going (remember this is a Mac!) I bought it with a seperate Airport Extreme Card that was trivial to install. The G5 even comes with an external Airport antenna. The included keyboard is very minimal and can take some getting used to. The keys are so tight that I often found myself hitting F13 when trying to hit the delete key. The mouse is a classic Apple mouse, i.e. one button and no scroll wheel. Personally I like Apple mice because they are very natural to use, even though it would seem like two buttons and scroll wheel could be added withot upsetting the ergonomic... The G5 is amazingly quiet ... most of the time. I have it sitting just a few feet from a P4 2.4GHz and the difference in sound is amazing. I have got the G5 to be noisy though, while installing Panther, and it was incredibly loud then. Nothing else I've done has been able to get it to be quiet. The superdrive is a little noisy, though really no more than most high speed optical drives. My G5 came with Jaguar pre-installed, but with a full retail version of Panther included in the box. I was very pleased with this, as most computers (not just Apple) only come with "restore" disks. I could write a ton just about Panther, but I will keep it short. I setup the G5 with Jaguar then immediately installed Panther. It took less than 20 minutes to install it, which is amazingly fast (no doubt because the hard drive was nearly empty!) I was also pleased to see that the G5 software bundle included a Photoshop patch to optimize Photoshop (7.0.1) for use with the G5 cpu. You could download this from Adobe's website, but it was cool that they included it anyways. I didn't run Photoshop on the G5 without the patch, so I can't really say what the net effect of the patch is, but Photoshop on my G5 is so much faster than Photoshop on my P4 ... there is no comparison! iTunes and iDvd are also very speedy on the G5. I could rip CDs to 256 kbps AAC at speeds over 16x. Again this blows away my P4. I was also able to make a dvd of my wedding, using a dv recording of the 15 minute ceremony, a 10 minute slideshow of pictures (made with iPhoto), and more pics and music for menus. iDvd made it a breeze to put together, and burned the dvd in less than 30 minutes. I made a similar project once using a friend's G4 and it took almost three times as long. Finally, when it comes to picking your G5, I must recommend the 1.8 GHz as being the best bang-for-the-buck. The 1.6 GHz version has notable downgrades in comparison (no pci-x, no ddr 400, etc.) The dual 2GHz is virtually identical to the 1.8 GHz version, but having dual processors. Also, I recommend sticking with the cheaper NVidia graphics card. The ATI cards are more highly regarded, but most of that is for their superior DirectX 9 implementation. DirectX 9 is a Windows technology, so it is meaningless on a Mac. Everything on a Mac uses lots of OpenGL, and NVidia is superior on OpenGL. So the NVidia card is really better than the ATI 9600 that is available, though it is cheaper. The ATI 9800 probably outperforms the NVidia, courtesy of having twice the amount of memory, but it is $350 more.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
New Apple user, December 31, 2003
By A Customer
I just bought my new G5 and it is the first Apple I have owned. My first G5 did not work and it was new sent directly from Apple. This happens from time to time. It took almost 2 weeks to get from order time with ground Fed X shipping. I was a bit surprised at the length and it was not very clear when ordering from Apple that it would take this long. They did send me a new PC since the first was broken, but I had to package up the broken one and bring it to a Fed X shipping drop off some miles away from my house and it took many phone calls to Apple. The second computer was supposed to be sent 2 day, but that did not happen either. A mistake was made on their end that delayed my second computer from arriving. In all, it took just short of a month to receive my working G5. Apple customer support is difficult to contact, obviously I had to make several calls (first sales, then tech support, then sales again, etc about 7-8 in all) which each had a wait time to talk to someone of at least 25 minutes. It was a time consuming process, but the tech support was great and worth the time to wait there.I am an experienced PC user so it was and still is a bit of a transition. Once you get the function variations down, you notice that operating the Mac is so much simpler than a PC. My favorite thing is not having to negotiate through Internet popups of course. Simple things such as this are built in to the Mac and are so easy to enable and disable. The G5 is super fast and silent. My only discontent with the machine actually is with software and hardware compatibility. I have since found that it is hard to find software and some hardware locally that is compatible with OS X panther. Programs I love to use, like MSN or Yahoo Messenger, lack in functionality with the Mac. The costs of my Children's games are quite a bit higher as well and most do not work in the OS X platform yet either. When purchasing equipment such as web cam's, printers, etc, it is critical that you verify and double verify that they will work with your PC. This is really not a MAC issue, more of an industry issue, but it is real and limits what you can do, especially if you are an old PC user. This is becoming less important as I find good Internet sites and other resources to find Mac support; it just takes a bit of getting use to. Even with all of the problems I had, I would highly recommend this product. I do believe Murphy had a bit to do with my experience and with the exception of the long wait times, and I am hoping Apple gets on this one, they did handle it in a professional and very acceptable manner. I love my new machine and am slowly building up a software inventory that has awesome graphics and play speed. I am even getting good at locating drivers for devices from sources other than the hardware manufacturers, since they are so slow to step up to the plate, which expands the hardware compatibility issue.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some People don't deserve quality!, January 17, 2004
Based on the review "Lame Duck" I think that the writer is a "Lame Brain".. I have operated a small business for the past 12 years with nearly all Mac's, and have never needed to take a Mac to a service technician.. This new G5 is the fastest and easiest machine to use yet.. For the record, we still have a 10 year old Quad 610 Mac for accounting that has never needed service, aside for adding some memory and a larger hard drive which any 4th grader could do.. The office presently has 5 Mac's and one Windows XP machine.. The Windows machine which is only handling faxes and UPS software requires more maintenance restarts to keep it working than all the Mac's combined! We have one Mac that is 3 years old, that we use as a server for all the sales machines.. It runs 24-7, and has not been turned off for the past 6 months, and then only because we needed to move it, and blow out a hand full of dust.. Frankly I am in business to sell other products, and can't afford to be bothered with the high maintenance required by the popular neighborhood machines.. Perhaps the writer of "Lame Duck" should actually try a Mac..
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