I've been using macs since 1994 (thats about 13 years now). The first models I came across were Mac Classics, LC II's and some LC 475's. At the time I was doing a college course and computing formed one of the classes. When we started the course, we had a choice. Use pc's with DOS/Windows 3.1 for Workgroups or Macs with OS 7. Needless to say I headed straight for the Macs and after a week of exposure, had taken to them like a duck to water! The gui and the keyboard shortcuts all seemed so logical. A far cry from the Commodore 64's I'd been using in secondary school. Looking back now I can still remember the excitement I felt exploring the Mac OS and needless to say I wanted to buy one. But as a poor student the funds weren't there. I would have to wait until 1997 before I could afford my first mac. So I will now list below the macs I've owned from 1997 to present.
1. Mac Performa 5400 | 2. PowerMac G3 266 | 3. PowerMac G4 Dual 867 | 4. PowerMac G5 Dualcore 2.0ghz | 5. iMac 24" 2.16ghz Core 2 Duo | 6. PowerMac G3 450mhz
After slaving away on an archaeological excavation during the summer of 1997, I purchased my first mac! Hurray! It was a Performa 5400, 160mhz 603e processor with an upgraded 32mb of ram and a 2gb hard drive. It was a nice computer, its main selling point being its all in one form factor which saved deskspace and made it easy to store while I was away on university holiday times. At the time I was using it mainly for writing assignments and playing Wing Commander 4 (ah the memories). After a while though I found the machines lack of expansion options to be limiting. It was also becoming clear that the Motorolla 603e processor was aging fast with the exciting new G3 series looming. So I had pretty much decided it was time to sell my 5400, only after a year of ownership and plump up the cash for a brand spanking new G3!
Everymac link for Performa 5400
I think the G3 266 was probably one of the best macs I've ever owned. It was fast, upgradeable and served me for a long time. My model was the midrange 266mhz desktop with 64mb of ram and a 4gb hard drive. Instead of going for an Apple monitor I chose a 15" Viewsonic CRT. Once I got my new toy I was amazed at its speed over the Performa. It really was blazingly fast! Over the next few years I would upgrade this baby with an additional SCSI pci card, 100mb Zip drive, 192mb max ram, a 40gb IBM hard drive (I actually think I had 3 hard drives in this at some point, 2 ide and one scsi), and a super fast G4 400mhz processor. By the time I was finished with this mac it was pretty much maxed out to its limits. This was especially true with the G4 processor as it took time to get this running at a stable speed. But as with all pc's, the time came yet again to move my work horse along and drop down more cash for a new mac. So this mac lasted me for roughly 4 years which was pretty good going really.
My dual 867 was yet another big leap forward in performance, mainly thanks to its twin G4 867 processors. Having skipped the graphite and quicksilver G4 macs I went for a heavily customised (and more expensive as a result) Mirrored Drived Door G4. So mine came with 512mb of ram, a Superdrive and the super Nvidia Geforce 4 Titanium graphics card. A real beast for gaming! Hard drive wise it had a standard 60gb from IBM. Over time I added more ram to take it to 1gb, a second cd rom in the spare bay below the Superdrive and a 120gb hard drive (total actually was 120gb, 60gb and the 40gb from the G3). Monitor wise I got a refurbished 17" Iiyama CRT (a great monitor in its day) and later added an SGi 17" CRT (basically the same monitor as the Iiyama). So it was a great mac for doing web work and playing Call of Duty and Unreal T2004! This was also my first mac to come with OS X preinstalled having previously played with the public beta of OS X on the G4 desktop. So yeah this was a great mac but a noisey one. Yup this was one of the infamous "windtunnel" G4's and despite having the powersupply replaced by Apple it still ran loud. So that was a bit of a pain in the butt. At work I had been using a G5 Dual 2.0ghz (and still am) which was a great workhorse and whisper quiet too. It was this G5 that would influence my next mac purchase.
4. PowerMac G5 Dualcore 2.0ghz
I have to say this was probably the worst mac I've owned. The main reason being I couldn't get a decent graphics card for it (it was PCI-Express). The other main reason being Apple announcing the move to Intel a few months after I got it. Damn!! After I got the G5 I was never quite happy with it. Despite being Dual Core I always felt my G5 Dual 2ghz at work performed better. Maybe OS X prefers two actual processors over a dual core? I dunno. I mean don't get me wrong this G5 was good, it just could have been better (even getting an Apple 20" Cinema display didn't help matters). With 1gb of ram and a 250gb hard drive this was a good spec mac, except for the graphics card. I stupidly made the mistake of sticking with the standard Nvidia 6600LE which I have to say is a crap graphics card. Around the time of purchase ATi had demoed an X1600 running on dual core macs and it promised to be a huge upgrade. I waited and waited (like numerous dual core G5 owners) but no announcements came. Needles to say ATi did release an X1600 for the dual core macs but by then I'd gotten rid of mine. So after just 7 months of ownership I was saying goodbye to PowerMac and about to purchase my first "Consumer Mac" since my Performa all those years ago.
5. iMac 24" 2.16ghz Core 2 Duo
This is the most versitile mac I've owned to date. Its fast, compact, darn sexy looking and oh my god the screen is to die for! Like the G4 867 I went for a heavily customised model. Mine was upgraded to 2gb of ram, 500gb hard drive and the excellent Nvidia 7600GT 256mb graphics card. The most important factor when getting this mac was flexability, i.e. the ability to boot into Windows. I love my games and like every mac users has always wished more pc games were ported to the mac. Now there's no need to worry about that. Apple has done a cracking job on BootCamp and I can boot into XP whenever I want and play Rome Total War or Company of Heroes. Magic! The other great feature of the iMac is Frontrow. I love my tv shows and coming home from work and watching them through Frontrow is just so slick. Any of my pc owning friends who see it in action are in awe and usually pretty jealous! So this has really become an entertainment mac. I still use it alot for working etc but Frontrow usage tends to dominate proceeding these days. And since moving to this consumer mac I haven't missed for one bit the easy access/upgrade options of a mac tower. Sure I'd love a MacPro but such a beast is 200% overkill for my needs. So overall I'm very happy with my iMac and because of its stunning display, will hang onto it for some time to come!
Having gone through the above list one might find this mac oddly placed right at the bottom. Well this is my download/server mac. Its a rev b G3 450mhz blue and white tower. Its got 512mb ram and 3 hard drives giving it a total of 100gb storage. I use it mainly to download stuff and host files etc, taking certain tasks away from the iMac. Since its a rev b model it doesn't suffer from the bad IDE bug that earlier blue and white towers suffered. Its running Panther at the moment and does so quite well. Haven't got round to putting Tiger on it but will probably do so once the iMac moves to Leopard later in the year.
