Hi,

I have a PowerBook G4 876Mhz Titanium that I bought in September of last year. I use it with an mbox and PTLE, as well as Reason, Live and a bunch of other audio stuff.

My question is this: With Apple releasing new software and new hardware every month, is my PowerBook too old already? Do I need to upgrade if I want to use Logic Express or any of the more powerful plugins? Or is this machine a good one that will serve me for another year or more before it needs to be replaced.

I'm seeing all these new G5's and aluminum 'Books and thinking I should've waited a little longer before I bought mine.

Whadya think?

I bought my 1 Ghz Powerbook in December of last year, and in april they released a 1.33 Ghz model which was a bit cheaper and included an Airport Extreme card.
In a couple of years I'll buy a new one (hopefully a 3 Ghz G5 Powerbook ) and a few months after that, Apple will release a faster, cheaper model.
That's just the way it is with computers, but you can't wait forever. Buy a new computer when you feel that the current one doesn't do the job anymore, and then learn to live with the fact that it won't be the greatest computer in the world forever. After all, the dual 2.5 Ghz G5 will become obsolete one day also.

I am new myself but reading a zillion posts here and it seems that it would not be obsolite people keep telling me throw lots of ram and a second maybe external HD to get things going but some of the people here I see use G3's and alot have 450mhz G4's with a ton of gear (just reading theor signatures) so I suppose it still works for them so dont panic.. yet..

There is a point when you have to stop upgrading the music software because the comp has maxed it's OS. But I don't think there is ever a time when you have to stop making music cause the software is old.

I was running ProTools Project on a powermac9600 which meant I had to stay with OS 8.6 up until last year. Gads, but I miss Studio Vision on that! Now I also have the 1Ghz 12" pwrbk and I wonder if if would be worth selling it to up to the 1.3. I wish I could, but this setup will have to do for a while.

I've heard it said you should first decide on the software you need to run, and then find the hardware that will run it. The other posters are right that any comp will be outdated even in just months. I think any G4 is still a viable machine for most music software. If you can still make music on whatcha got, then keep it rolling.

Short answer: No!

A lot of pro musicians are using 450MHz and 550MHz Titaniums. Yours will still smoke the latest G4 iBooks and most iMacs. You need at least 512MB of RAM though.

i think there comes a time when you have to say to yourself

'STOP i have enough' we are contstantly bombarded with
these updates and bug fixes etc etc ad nauseum

just think of the nould breaking classic stuff that was done on ataris etc

if we stand back and look at our sytems and think about how
much they actually do already i think we can be confident that whatever we are running - it is the music that is the most important -

keep your mac as it is - spend your money on a night out with a significant other.

gog

I agree with Gog. The sad fact is that the day you buy your computer, it is obsolete. That's the way of the industry. The fact is we buy these things to make music. That is the most important thing.

The questions I have are, 1) Does your Mac do the job its suppose to do without problems? 2) Are you happy with the quality of your productions (ie. the way your computer processes reason, or pt, or live)?

If your happy with the processing, and it does the job, why would you want to trade up? If it doesn't, try configuring it differently, or adding more ram.

I switched from a P4 2.4 Ghz, 512k PC to a 1 Ghz 256k iBook, and the iBook runs circles around the PC. Bigger is not always better.