Got a Powerbook G4

It's a 15 incher with 1.5 ghz, and 1 gb of ram with 160gb hard drive.

I actually got this for free. A co worker gave it to me because she no longer wanted it because she got a new MBP.

It is in good shape and the screen is mint, no white spots whatsoever. I'm still debating whether selling it, or just keep it as a print server. According to the price check forum I could only fetch 200-250 bucks for it. I'd rather keep it and use it than let it go for that.

It actually runs Safari very well (with the exception of youtube). And word processing on office 2008 runs smoothly as well.

Is there anything else that the Mac folks would think is a good use for this computer?

 

The usual things that older tech is good for - email, browsing, WP, online kids games.

It's a good machine for a younger child to work with; my girls 4 & 6 both use older notebooks from mommy & daddy for just these purposes.

 

It's still a decent notebook. You can't get the latest OS X to run on it, but it can do internet and word processing. As a backup or to loan out, it's perfect. I still have a running PowerBook, just in case aliens attack and I need to write a virus to cripple their fleet...

 

Use it for wireless surfing around the house, or try running Linux or learning *nix on OS X.

 

sounds like a good DVR and/or media server if you set it up right... don't really need a lot of power for that.

 

How would that work?

 

I like EyeTV myself... and hook it up to the TV. Its the main way I watch TV, and edit what I record and get it exported so it syncs up to my iPhone so I have stuff to do on the move when waiting for whatever... Theres tons of software for doing things out there, from just using iTunes and sharing, to many other things.

 

OP, you should keep it and use it for software testing that you don't want to install immediately on your newer Macs. You can install Leopard on it and run a lot of current programs on it for testing.

 

that is going to be harder and harder to do as many newer programs do not support PPC macs

 

I'll be honest, I can't see myself using it because it is just way too slow for anyhting other than internet/word processing/facebook, and even those things are pretty much at the limit of what it can run smoothly.

I think I will do the media center thing and hook it up to my TV for DVDs/playing other downloaded content etc, and also download/upload torrents 24/7.

 

You could probably upgrade the RAM and get much better performance out of that machine (I hear OS X loves memory), though the CPU would then be your limiting factor. Still, I used a Pentium M at 1.7GHz with Windows 7 up until a few months ago; that didn't stop me from general student tasks!