[Tfug] Refurb Macs - which to get?

[Jim Secan]

At 12:00 AM 8/17/2006 -0700, you wrote:
>Still contemplating getting a Mac to play with OS X, which of these (if
any) is 
>a good starter Mac?
>
>    Macintosh Desktop Computers, Refurbished Macintosh Computers, MAC PC's 
>    Cheap
>    http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=810

IMHO, none of these.  With anything less than a G4 with 1/2-GB memory you
are going to have some serious folded-arm-syndrome problems.  Even with a
G4 you're asking for it.  With Apple now producing Intel versions of all
platforms, you might be able to pick up some refurbished G5 systems cast
off by people moving to the Intel systems, but probably not at prices such
as those shown on the page you  cite.

Are you interested in full-up OS X, or the *nix that sits under the OS X
GUI?  An alternative is Open Darwin:
<http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html>.  I've not had any
experience with this, but it is supposed to be open-source version of the
*nix guts underlying OS X.  You might be able to run that on a lesser box,
but not with the GUI.

Jim
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| Jim Secan           | Northwest Research Assoc, Inc |
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