I posted earlier about my wife's iMac G3 biting the dust. I'm trying to replace her Mac. I was looking a G4 iMacs on eBay. (Lampshade version.) I then started wondering about eMacs but I don't know much about them. Did they have any big problems?

All things considered, which would be a better buy a 15" 800 mHz G4 iMac (512mb RAM, 80 GB hard drive, Airport Extreme Card) or a 17" 1.25mHz eMac with 1GB RAM, 80gb hard drive and Airport Extreme card.

I realize the eMac is a lot bigger but it would seem to be a better deal but it also seems that they go for less than the iMacs so I wondered if there was an issue there.

Thanks,
Michael

eMac is as heavy as a CRT display. Swelling/exploding capacitors is one issue you have to deal with unless it was repaired under warranty.

Joe

My husband uses an eMac as his daily work machine. I think it is the 800Mhz version, but I would have to double check to be sure. He runs Panther on it and it has just the stock RAM. He uses it for web work and light word processing only.

We bought the eMac new when his bondi blue iMac died. The first one we bought had the hard drive fail within about a month and this is the replacement that we got from Apple. Funny story about the repair of the HD. They replaced the HD but broke the power button while doing the repair. The power button was on backorder so, rather than make us wait, they gave us a new-in-box replacement.

The eMac is heavy, but if you aren't going to move it around, I see no reason not to get one.

Some of the eMacs did have video and power issues. Here is a link that shows the ones you should avoid. HTH

[macktez.com]

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Roswell, GA (Atlanta suburb)

Thanks, Joe.

I decided to go with the iMac. The eBay seller had fantastic feedback and responded very quickly to my questions. I got the 800 mHz G4 iMac as described above for $350, including shipping.

I might have over paid a little but I didn't want to spend a lot of time searching for a bargain. This seemed reasonable. (A local Mac repair store wanted to sell me a 1 gHz 17" iMac G4 for $450. It only had 256mb RAM and no Airport Card. On top of that, I would have had to pay nearly $50 in tax!)

Hopefully, this will work out right.

Michael

It will make a great digital picture frame when he's gotten some better in the future!