Okay here we go, now lets say you or a certain high school-er or college person in your house wants to start making movies, music, graphic art or just wants to learn any of the set of Adobe software and now you know that you are facing the issue of needing a ton of juice to run that. Then you think, am I going to have to shell out 1,500 bucks plus the cost of titles to do this? NO! Remember that the POWER MAC dual processor g5 a few years ago, was just as expensive as that killer intel version of today, and it also ran about 1,500 to 2,000 bucks. The thing you need to do these functions is the DUAL processor. You don't need an i3 or i5 to do that. The complex processes of music, especially, require mainly that the functions be split between the two. That is the trick, and in many cases, the POWERMAC g5 dual for music was the most wonderfully stable situation for midi and the other peripherals needed to do a great music station. A lot of us home-based pros, for music and art, who need to buy other great innovations, like Wacom pads, synthesizers and the like, feel no need to replace all those titles and get new ones just because the new stuff is out. It's not really needed for every facet of the creative pipeline, unless you are really running a pro multimedia video editing station in HIGH DEFINITION, or building dynamic PHP or DHTML5 websites, where you would need the high res monitor, thunderbolt, & speed of the browser to match the internet upload and download speeds of today. Other than that, you are golden on a legacy mac to learn the rest of it. See, as of some years, ago, we reached a plateau where the requirements to run a full recording station or art station that would seriously handle all the Adobe titles, and Final cut pro included, where easily and very capably done on the macs of the day. The browser on a POWERMAC g5 will not run on the internet as your chrome does, but so what really? Your smart phone can check your email for you, and you can pick up a laptop for that, or for that matter a tablet. The point of this post is that on eBay you can easily find a mac that will do everything you need to do to create a pumping, kick butt money making creative workstation for around $199!!! What you want to look for is a big leasing company or refurbisher who just got back a lot of these from a company that finally folded or upgraded. Take your time and search them out a while.. You will come across a company or person that really needs to unload it. The best way to get this to work for you, is to actually get one wiped clean of an operating system. Most small or large towns will then have a mom and pop style mac repair shop. These guys absolutely love old macs, and will most happily install the thing from the ground up with a copy of 10.2 that will run everything you need it too. So then you go and pick up the legacy titles you need on ebay as well, and you could have a slamming music and art workstation for very cheap. Then just stick a shelf model Samsung LED tv on that Bad Boy, and wham! your ready to punt work like the those huge mac-all-in-ones with the thunderbolt and the retina display. Honestly, if we are talking music production, which many teenagers are going to want to do these days, and that will mean not just a mac but a bunch of other goodies as well, like mic and guitars maybe, this can really save you a bundle. The other bonus is that anytime you really want a workstation that you are productive on, a good tip is to NOT have the internet access directly on your art or music machine right when you start working. Take your portfolio pieces and print them and matte them, stick them in a book or on the wall and really judge them, before making them into a web-based portfolio the second you have done them. Bounce your songs and listen to them in the car, on headphones, and let your friends hear them and go back and master them again and again before you stick them right up on you tube. Your work will better and people will notice this level of critique you have put into your results Your will skills will improve in bigger leaps. That way, you actually focus on the quality of the work you are doing and wait until you are done with that portfolio piece or song and then only post it up on the internet until you have really worked it to the point of being quality. Just a tip.
