Would you buy a G4 off eBay?

[Raven]

I've never used eBay and am wondering if this is something to consider.
I use a G4/400 now and would love to move up (especially with the flat panel screen!)  if the price was right. Not ready for a G5 yet.
Whaddya think? Where is the best deal to get the last of the 1GB+ G4's?

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...&category=14912

[gmann]

A lot of feedback duplications on his record, I would tend to be cautious. Be sure and check out the negative as well as the neutral postings.

[Bill]

Skimmed through the sellers last ten or so sales.
$5/$6/$20 items.
Two negative feedbacks on late delivery or payment?

Would I buy a G4 from ebay? Yes. Did.

Would I buy from this seller? Well I doubt it.

[Al]

I've bought many of my Macs off of eBay.  Be cautious of their feedback rating and how many negatives do they have and why.

A lot of buying, but only until you go back to January of this year was there a sale.

He does hold a less than .5% negative feedback rating, that's good for over 500 auctions (buying and selling).

That package deal is fully loaded and is atleast worth $3000 in the open market, about $5000+ if purchased new when the items first came out, going right now for under $900.  I'd bet it will have a lot of last second bidders that will get the price up there some.

I'd be hesitant to bid, but the auction item itself looks great!

If you do decide on bidding and win the auction, opt for an escrow service (this is important!).  They will hold your money until you recieve delivery of your purchase, check it out and you give them the okay to release your money to the seller or not.

[Xairbusdriver]

Nope! But I don't go to casino's either. I guess I'd rather buy from a known entity for a little more money than take a shot in the dark (especially when I can't see that the 'gun' may actually be pointed at me! ).

I guess I look at eBay like investing - never pay more than I am willing to lose (and that ain't much!). Seems to me the buyer is doing all the research, risk taking and spending, all the seller has to do is write captivating copy and deliver what s/he says. There is no guarantee, support, or easy recourse. On some items, you don't even know if has been legally imported into the country!  Again, that is all pretty much up to the buyer.

But that's just my opinion and you know what that's worth!    

[Paddy]

This item, if and when it does sell, will go for WAY more than $900!!! I've got news for you - if you bought the dual 1.25GHz from Apple (they don't sell the 1.4 GHz any more) configured this way, it would come to a whopping $9,055. And that's without the Bluetooth module and OS X server. Sure, you could knock off a few hundred here and there putting in your own RAM and hard drives...but it still isn't going to be anyone's idea of a steal when all is said and done. In all likelihood, if it does sell, it will go for more than a new G5.  

Unless you're looking to do video production or something, this is a LOT more storage etc. than the average user could possibly need. What exactly are you looking for Raven, apart from something faster than a G4 400?

BTW - I put a 1GHz Sonnet card in my G4 a while back - been quite pleased with the performance boost. Now there are even faster cards available. Might think about that as a way to "tide you over" - since I assume one of the reasons you're not going for a G5 yet is the cost.

[jepinto]

Something smells.

Two displays, one machine, speakers, keyboard and only $12.00 shipping?

[Raven]

Yah, my better judgement thought this was too good of a deal. I don't know how to play the eBay game, so I will leave it alone. I'm not into gambling.

Paddy,
As a designer I want to move up - need a faster Mac with more HD capacity and OSX. Now using 9.1 with QuarkXpress, Photoshop 5.5 and Freehand 9. I am not a techie enought to know how to add components to my existing G4/400, so I won't go there!

I've purchased new models/OS off the shelf twice before, and even doing that with adjustments to my peripherals and OS  gave me a few days down time, which I hate when I am in the middle of design projects.

So I am thinking I want a newer G4. I need time to learn OSX and have to figure out what SCSI peripherals I have to delete or adapt.

So I need some kind of game plan to make the transition, and THAT is where I need some good advice. In my small town, I have no Mac dealers and few Mac users. You folks are my best bet for advice.

[chrisharjo]

 
I wouldn't buy a G4 off ebay unless the seller had a lot of recent good sales and you can email the winners and see if they got what was in the auction and it works. I use eBay a lot, just as a buyer, my eBay ID is byter133. I have had not problem with buying, I even bought my Sonnet G3 upgrade for my PM8600 on ebay from Sonnet, they sell on eBay too under sonnet_dealdesk, they aren't selling right now but I put them in my favorites on my eBay. I see a lot of G4 Powerbooks for auction on eBay, but they look too good to be true. There are resellers there who sell like stores but even some of them are crooks, I think they do it when thier sales go down. They get charged for any thing with a starting bid at $10.00 or higher, thats why we see a lot of $9.99 starting bid auctions. It is a crap shoot but you have to look good at feed backs, oh there is a old Mac product seller called olde mac milt who is reliable, I have bought off him and had no problems.

[kelly]

Raven. First I would not buy off ebay, for a lot of reasons.

I agree that getting a G4 instead of a G5 might be best for you.

There's lots of online venders. Not to mention Apple itself.

Dual 1.42s are still out there. But Dual 1.25s will save a lot of money.

http://new.lowendmac.com/ppc/deals.html

http://dealmac.com/sections/systems.html

Personally I don't see a big problem with a transition.

Get your new machine, Partition the drive, copy over old stuff.

You'll need to find the best available SCSI Card if you need that.

Otherwise, not a big deal.

Just have OS X in it's own Partition and learn from it as you will.

Use it when you've updated your software over time.

[lvixen]

Actually I emailed this seller about this item. It's not $888. I thought it was waaaaay too cheap also. I told him that his ad was misleading. If you wanted the G4 with the two monitors it was 3500. If you wanted the G4 with only the 23", he told me 2500. I think the ad was done that way so that he could weed out the true buyers. He mentioned in his email that they had problems with buyers not paying.

Yes, he had two negative, but it was for him buying something, NOT selling. Plus the fact that his feedback is over 590 positives, personally makes me wonder about those sellers, not so much him as a buyer.

I bought my G3 laptop from eBay, great deal. I actually made wonderful friends out of the deal. (no extra charge). If you feel good about a deal.. do it. If you don't.... then don't.

I've purchased over 100 items from ebay including my laptop and car. I've only had two deals that were not great.
One was a duplicate, duplicate of a duplicate videotape. But since I didn't ask if it was an original, I accept partial blame.  

The other was a piece of software where they sent the wrong thing and when I tried to straighten the problem out the person had changed their email. I wasn't going to chase them all over the planet for $15.  The worst part was that it took so long, I missed my opportunity to post negative feedback.  
That would have been my first and only post of negative feedback. I posted neutral on the video.

If you have any questions about buying.. feel free to contact me.

[Bill]

Raven.
How long can you wait before needing or wanting a newer machine?
What would be your top dollar amount on the investment?

From what you've described on the usage of the newer machine it would be a toss up on either a G5 or G4 because as already stated they both have pluses and cons.

Personally my money would be on a G4 but thats me.

If you could wait a few weeks [or so] you'll most likely see the G4s go down even more in price. Also, regarding ebay. Given a choice between ebay and some sort of personal contact .... take a guess which holds the votes. <gr>

[Raven]

Kelly, Bill,
Thanks for your suggestions. I won't buy a G4 off eBay. Case closed.

Now it's a matter of  looking at the latest G4 before the G5's come out. I don't have to be on the cutting edge, and when the price is right, I'll buy (whenever that is! ;-) )

Kelly, you mentioned it's "not a big deal" to you, but I'm a rookie at all that.  Partition? I don't even know how to do that, etc. So I appreciate  your level of expertise, but I'm not in the league you're in.  :-)

I may start a new thread to get all the good TS folks to help me walk through my transition from OS9 to X, and from G4/400 to Dual G4,  and how to handle my SCSI devices, etcetera.

The most important factor for me is that I can't have downtime if I am working on important design projects. It has to be a smooth transition.
I would work on my existing system, then gradually convert to my new system (new G4 with OSX). It's very important for me to be able to work in QX in OS9 for a period of time.

Once the conversion is complete, then sell off the old system to recover some of my costs for the new one. If that makes sense!

More later.

[Bill]

Makes perfect sense Raven.

One thought. If you didn't want to go through the partitioning (yet it isn't that much of a big deal), you could try and find a machine [used] where the owner already has the drive/drives partitioned or 'ask' him/her to do so.

[sandbox]

Hey Raven
To answer the original question
“Would you buy a G4 off eBay?”
Yes I would, but that’s me.
Like lvixen, I have purchased many items from eBay through the years and only got partly burnt once, on a SCSI adaptors for my powerbook, that required X 30 pins, and I got one with Y 29? But they sent me a second adaptor thinking the first was just faulty, turns out the whole batch was.

For your needs, I wouldn’t recommend starting out your eBay experience purchasing a G4$, you should get your feet wet first, there’s a learning curve like most other worthwhile endeavors.

Kelly, Paddy, Bill, ABD, and the whole crew at TS have a knack for finding good deals on hardware/software, you probably couldn’t find a better resource on the planet.