News

Get an SSD

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If you are still on the fence about the potential of an SSD for your Power Mac G5 (or older computer), today is Black Friday, which means there are bound to be solid deals on solid state drives out there.

In fact, yesterday, I noticed the good people at OWC had a 100GB Intel 710 SSD for $29.00. That’s a great price for anyone on the fence about upgrading their older Mac. Unfortunately, the deal is sold out now, but you can also get a 300GB drive for $79, which is a very nice deal too. Go get it. Intel drives are always pretty good, usually built for enterprise which means they are made to endure in lots of configurations. And they are SATA II, which means they will work fine in our Power Mac G5s.

I am not affiliated with OWC in anyway, nor do I shill for them lightly. I have purchased RAM and other upgrades over the years from them and have never been disappointed. They are a great company that still offer some good hardware and resources for our older Macs, so today might be a good day to stock up on another upgrade or two.

If you notice any other good deals floating around, let me know.

Enjoy!

— Nathan

Introducing Power to the Mac blog

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Christian dropped me an email a couple of weeks back, expressing his appreciation for this site and the introduction of his new website, Power to the Mac.

Excellent work, Christian.

We always can use more voices in the G5 world, sharing ins and outs, spreading software wisdom, and helping us get the most out of our beautiful (if aging) machines.

By the way, to keep up with most G5 related sites, I do typically use viva PowerPC’s excellent “world” blog section which captures the RSS feeds of several sites. A great way to save time and see what others are writing about.

— Nathan

You Tell Me: How much have you/would you spend on your G5?

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One of our awesome readers, Adam, sent me an intriguing question that I get frequently: how much should I spend on a Power Mac G5?

I’m curious to know what some of you think. For those of you with G5s, what has been your budget to maximize your G5 with upgrades and fixes? For those of you looking to purchase one, how much are you willing to spend? Is there a limit?

I feel pretty content with my Power Mac at the moment, and in fact, over the last few weeks, it hasn’t been in much use with work life and family life keeping me on my toes. Counting the SSD (which was the last and largest bit of money spent on it), I feel like I have likely maximized performance too. More RAM would just be tossing money in a dark pit.

But what about you? I’d love to see your comments below.

– Nathan

SimpleMarkPPC just got updated

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Welcome to the new SimpleMarkPPC, kind of similar but a lot better than the old SimpleMarkPPC.

new simple mark opening screen

From the moment you fire it up, you’ll be greeted with some changes that are sure to get you excited for the world’s only PowerPC-exclusive-Mac-OS MarkDown app. Not just the updated welcome screen above, you’ll notice a full screen mode sure to draw your attention away from boring blog posts. A feature also included is a user desired manual save command, so you can be sure your document saved and updated before you retreat to other tasks. A rudimentary Preferences pane features nothing less than a way to change your font and font size (with a couple of caveats). Unbelievable! Most important, the Leopard-like engine beneath the hood purrs with serious efficiency. I made a few modifications myself.

And if that doesn’t sell you, there is even a Help menu!

Best of all, it’s free, and it lets you enjoy the deliciousness that is MarkDown.

Check out a new screenshot and download the app from SimpleMarkPPC’s website.

This latest version is 1.0.2.

Happy writing, blogging, coding, or whatever.

— Nathan

Video Editing on Your G5

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I still have a few holes in my exploration of software options for Power Mac G5s. One of those is actually glaring – video editing. It’s glaring partly because lots of G5s were probably used for video production over the years.

On the consumer side, iMovie HD in iLfe ’09 is not a bad option for the home video or the beginner’s project. I was always impressed by what Apple did with the iLife suite. They brought some great tools to the masses.

Final Cut Express 4 was intended as an in between option. It’s more powerful than iMovie but not as extensive as Final Cut Pro. (Keep in mind that the current version of these is simply Final Cut, which kind of makes it all confusing.)

Final Cut Pro is the more robust option direct from Apple. Version 6 is the last one to run on Power Mac G5s. If you can find it, it’s great software. I’m sure there are some video shops that might even still use it for production.

Adobe Premiere 6.5 was the last version of Premiere to run on our Power PC machines. It is not available in Adobe Creative Suite 4 either. You’ll have to dig around for a separate or earlier copy, although After Effects in CS4 will work on your G5. A little confusing.

A final option is Avid Media Composer. Evidently, any version before 3.5 will run on our G5s.

We’ve got options, and it really depends on what you are comfortable and familiar with.

— Nathan