I've had an eMac for about 4 years and it's getting realllllly slow! I use it only for email, surfing, etc. In other words, I don't use it for work.

My question is should I purchase more memory or buy new (I'm thinking of Minimac.)

Any suggestions, advice?

Thanks

Since I love spending someone else's money, I vote for the new mini!

If you have a monitor it is a tough to beat and the performance increase from your eMac to a Core 2 Duo will amaze you.

Also, you get a GB of RAM (should be fine for your uses) and an 80GB hard drive which I bet is substantially larger than you currently have.

Plus, to make it easier to swallow, Leopard and iLife '08 are included and that's over $200 worth of software.

I am a penny pincher myself but when it comes down to the speed and increase in productivity, you would be doing yourself a major favor by getting a new Mac at this point. And the Mini is great - my aunt has one that I help her out with often - a sturdy little machine with lots of oomph for the price.

If you don't happen to have a display, or if the one you have has a lot of miles on it, I would suggest taking a look at the new iMacs.
(I could be biased, here )

For about the price of a good 20" display, speakers, keyboard and mouse, iMac gives you that plus a larger, faster HD (250GB), a more powerful graphics card, built-in iSight camera and built-in stereo speakers all in a neat space-saving package. And don't forget the same OS + software mentioned above AND room to upgrade to 4GB RAM! AND a faster frontside bus (800 MHz FSB compared to 667MHz FSB on the mini!)

Making this decision even harder.
I like spending other people's money too.

EDIT:

With above options you could start using it for work, too. Macs are quite friendly with PCs now.

OTOH: Least painful on wallet option:
If you backup any important files you want to keep (archive and install), then format the HD with the write zero to the disk option checked then reinstall OS X. You would save a bundle o' cash and could use it till it falls apart.

Next to the least painful option:
Buy a new HD (internal or external) install OS X on new HD, migrate apps and files to new HD, zero out old HD and use for backup. Then nickel & dime it when things start to fall apart. Who knows? Maybe you could use it for another 4 years!

Thanks to all of you! I almost was out the door to buy a new one until the suggestion(s) purchasing an external hard drive and "zero" write the HD!
I assume that means to archive the docs and apps I want to save and then reinstall the software?

I'm undecided at this point but leaning towards the mini; the eMac takes up a lot of space on my desk and my son has a monitor I can take. One more question, how many ports does the mini have? I have a printer, iSight, digital camera and, of course, the mouse. Is there room for these (and anything else)?

Thank you again.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/W ... y/mac_mini

That *should* link to the gallery for the Mini at the Apple website.
Looking at the back, I can see that the Mini has 4 USB ports and one Firewire.
If you purchase an Apple keyboard (or use the one that came with your eMac) you'll have two USB ports right there.

haha, I knew I shouldn't have added that one.
(Steve J. is gonna be pissed off.)

Yes, exactly.

I don't know if the performance would be that much better with just a new HD. Are you able to add any more RAM?

I don't know if I can add more RAM; how do I tell? See what you're dealing with?

Thanks.

The eMacs have 2 RAM slots, if one is free you can add more. How much RAM do you have currently? Click on the Apple icon in the menu bar and down to "About this Mac", it will show you much you have. If you click on the "more info" button in the About this Mac window, it will open the Apple System Profiler. Click on "Memory" on the left side and in the right window you should see details on each RAM slot and how much, if any, memory is in each slot.

If your machine seems slower than it was originally, I'd try downloading Onyx (it's free) and running it. Once opened click on the Automation heading and with the default boxes checked, click on "execute". It will do a thorough system cleaning and usually speed up a sluggish machine.

If all your doing with the eMac is light work, might as well try and see if you can get it running up to your standards before shelling out cash for a new machine. Our house desktop machine is a 1.25 eMac, and it's still going strong.

Thanks for the recommendation; it may be my imagination but it does seemed to have helped.

I'm not sure, but there appears to be an open slot (above it is an icon that looks like a computer monitor). My question now is what exactly should I purchase? Brand, version, etc. btw, I'd also like to know if upgrading to Tiger would be another way to go and/or could I put it on a imac (?monitor) that my son would give me? Which is best, economically? Finally, here are the specifics about my computer:

Hardware Overview:

Machine Model: eMac
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU):256 KB
Memory: 256 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.6.4f1

Thank you for all your help and patience. This is a great site!

You can install 1G max RAM in that model. You should notice a big performance difference. Tiger should run fine on there also with a RAM upgrade.

You can get an Apple-certified discounted 1G RAM kit here for $97.99.

As Bmer said, getting more that 256 MB of RAM will be a big speed improvement. If you go to 1 GB you'll be amazed how much snappier the machine seems. I'd make the RAM a priority over upgrading the OS to 10.4.

How difficult is it to install memory? Exactly what is involved? :?:

Here is a video.

http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/i ... /high.html

Thanks, but that video was for a Macmini; I have an eMac.

Also, that site listed memory upgrades as little as $50. A recommendation from macosg was $97.

Thank you for replying so quickly!