MacMedics: It is time to retire PowerMac G4's and G5's

MacMedics recently completed a triple PowerMac G5 retirement at a local Baltimore hospital. All three machines were in place and up in running in under 3 hours. If you’re a PowerMac user AND a professional graphic designer, MacMedics is now officially recommending that you retire your trusty G4 or G5. (See pictures of Dana loading up for the install below.)


This is a great time to upgrade a small or large Mac workgroup, as Apple Finance is offering 0% leasing until June 30th. If you’d like details, see this PDF. MacMedics will also issue a credit good for dollars off your Mac Pro or iMac purchase or lease when you trade in your G4 or G5.
Don’t forget that if you’ve had a Mac in service for more than three years (any Mac), it’s time to retire and replace your internal hard drive! If a new Mac is not in the cards for you, do yourself a favor by being proactive, and retire your hard drive, before it kicks the bucket. We have a whole web page all about hard drive “retirement”. Check it out at http://www.HardDrivesDie.com. (We recommend hard drive retirement after 2 years of service in Apple laptops. Also don’t forget to check to see if you have the dreaded Seagate 7.01 firmware drive. If you do, replace it now!! Get details here.)
Here’s some of the highlights from the letter that we’re sending to MacMedics clients about G4 and G5 machine retirement and replacement:
1. Your PowerMac will NOT run the next version of Apple’s operating system, Snow Leopard, which is due out later this year. While this is not an issue now, it will be one that will catch up to you quickly. You might want to take this fact into account when considering when you might replace your machine. Snow Leopard will only run on Intel Macs.
2. If you are using your computer professionally, and it’s your main tool for graphic design, then you should consider having the fastest computer you can afford. Your time is valuable, and with a Multi Core Intel based Mac you will be able to work much, much faster. The performance score for a G5 1.6 Ghz is 1000, while the score for a Mac Pro can be as high as 14904, and an iMac can be as high as 3873.
3. If you have not already done so, and you are planning on continuing to use your current Mac, your hard drive should be replaced proactively. Visit our web site www.HardDrivesDie.com for more info on this topic.
MacMedics is an Apple Authorized Value Added Reseller, and as such we can help you buy a new Macintosh when you are ready to do so. We wanted to let you know that we are now advising MacMedics clients that are designing on G5’s that it IS time to start planning for an upgrade. With Mac technology improving more and more quickly, and with file size and file complexity growing just as fast, it is pushing our clients into new computers faster then ever before.