[Zubir]

Well, I'm pleasantly surprised. I bought the machine to learn OS X, which I have almost no experience with. It's very intuitive (if you're used to a GUI.) Everything's laid out well, everything easy to find.

What really surprised me is that the thing actually runs pretty snappy, considering that it's 533mhz, 256mb ram, 5400rpm ATA 66 harddrive, and a 16mb RAGE whatever videocard (I haven't run any games or heavy apps yet, just normal usage and browsing.) I've read numerous posts where people have stated that OS X is unusable at these specs, but this Mac is close in performance to an old AMD 2000+, 512mb ram, 7200rpm ATA 100 hardrive, 128mb GeForce 5200 junk machine I have. Not too bad. I'm getting the itch to upgrade those 4 parts in the Mac to 1.2mhz, 1gb ram, 7200rpm ATA 100 hardrive, and a Radeon 9000 pro to see what it can do! Guess I need to get a second job for a month or so!

[villalobos]

Originally posted by Zubir:
Well, I'm pleasantly surprised. I bought the machine to learn OS X, which I have almost no experience with. It's very intuitive (if you're used to a GUI.) Everything's laid out well, everything easy to find.

What really surprised me is that the thing actually runs pretty snappy, considering that it's 533mhz, 256mb ram, 5400rpm ATA 66 harddrive, and a 16mb RAGE whatever videocard (I haven't run any games or heavy apps yet, just normal usage and browsing.) I've read numerous posts where people have stated that OS X is unusable at these specs, but this Mac is close in performance to an old AMD 2000+, 512mb ram, 7200rpm ATA 100 hardrive, 128mb GeForce 5200 junk machine I have. Not too bad. I'm getting the itch to upgrade those 4 parts in the Mac to 1.2mhz, 1gb ram, 7200rpm ATA 100 hardrive, and a Radeon 9000 pro to see what it can do! Guess I need to get a second job for a month or so!

The DA series is one of the best all round version of the PM Apple came up with. People on this forum tend to be geeks remember, and will not settle for anything else than the fastest and most recent. If you are already satisfied with the overall speed, before you splurge money in an processor upgrade, try the RAM upgrade. It will make a huge difference at a reduced cost. I actually have one of these computers, upgraded with a Gigadesign 1.25 GHz, and I cannot find any reasons to upgrade(apart from rendering stuff faster on Imovie, and the satisfaction of owning a brand spanking new G5). I bought the thing for $1000 from the education store. Was really a great buy.

Another little known secret of the DA is the integrated ampli which can drive regular speakers via an adapter. No need for the powered speakers. Works very well too.

Enjoy.

villa

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by Zubir:
Well, I'm pleasantly surprised. I bought the machine to learn OS X, which I have almost no experience with. It's very intuitive (if you're used to a GUI.) Everything's laid out well, everything easy to find.

What really surprised me is that the thing actually runs pretty snappy, considering that it's 533mhz, 256mb ram, 5400rpm ATA 66 harddrive, and a 16mb RAGE whatever videocard (I haven't run any games or heavy apps yet, just normal usage and browsing.) I've read numerous posts where people have stated that OS X is unusable at these specs, but this Mac is close in performance to an old AMD 2000+, 512mb ram, 7200rpm ATA 100 hardrive, 128mb GeForce 5200 junk machine I have. Not too bad. I'm getting the itch to upgrade those 4 parts in the Mac to 1.2mhz, 1gb ram, 7200rpm ATA 100 hardrive, and a Radeon 9000 pro to see what it can do! Guess I need to get a second job for a month or so!

OS X is not usuable with these specs but it sure isn't gonna be fast. And I'm very skeptical about the AMD 2000+ comparison, unless there is something misconfigured with that machine. That said, the 533 should be a fine machine, esp. if you add another 256 MB RAM.

I'd start there, and then decide later if you want to get the 7200 rpm drive and Radeon 9000 Pro. I'd go with the 7200 rpm drive before the Radeon or CPU upgrade by the way, since the drive swap is a lot easier, and might be quite a bit cheaper too.

[Zubir]

I'm not implying that it's a speed demon, it's just a lot quicker than I thought it would be. The comparision to the PC is in browsing the net, browsing the file system, etc. As stated above, i haven't run any apps or games on it yet. I'm sure the Athlon would eat it alive in those respects. I'm just pleasantly surprised that a machine this old can run this well.

[Cadaver]

I'm using a dual 500MHz G4 (gigabit motherboard) G4 at work, and it does a very respectable job with OS X. Currently has 768MB of RAM (one of my sticks went bad, so I'm down from 1GB), a fast 60GB HD with 8MB cache and a PCI ATA/133 controller (plus the stock 40GB HD as a backup storage device), and a Radeon 8500. Processors run at stock speed.

I was surprised at how well OS X runs on this machine. The second processor makes such a difference. The DP500 replaced a 900MHz Blue & White G3, and the 400MHz clock speed difference is not even an issue.

[BurpetheadX]

I just sold my upgraded DA 533.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=5103805180

With all its upgrades it screamed. Very fast machine. OS X will have a huge speed boost on yours by just sticking a 512 chip in, and especially a 7200 RPM drive.

[booboo]

I'm still on a 533 - though a DP - I've had about 15 Mac's since my first Centris, but this 533DP is an absolute gem, The only bad thing, from my pov, is the lack of a built-in audio input.

Right now I've got Safari, Entourage, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Preview, iTunes and Cubase SX running, plus a 2nd user.

Increasing the RAM to 768MB made the biggest difference. To 1GB less so, but still worthwhile.

Replacing the HD with a 7200 rpm/8MB cache was also well worth it.

Adding in an ATI 9000 was worth it mainly for the loss of the old card's fan, but didn't make much difference under 10.1 (which was when I did it ) However, I'm not a major gamer . . .