Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple Power Mac G5 Desktop M9020LL/A (1.60-GHz PowerPC G5, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD-R/CD-RW Drive)

I purchased this computer after owning an Apple iBook and eMac, and being unbelievably happy with both (I previously stupidly bought a gateway windoze machine which only worked correctly when at least five planets were aligned and the gravitational pull of the moon coincided with the lunar equinox). This machine is so far beyond what i expected, and is worth every penny I paid for it. It is QUIET as can be, and has enough power and speed to do anything I could imagine. I use mine with an Apple 20" flat screen in my business (Landscape Architecture), and it has saved me enough time and frustration in the three months I've owned it to pay for itself already. I haven't had to fix one thing, and have never had to go looking in some goofy "window" like system preferences or other nerdfest network settings to make it work flawlessly with my other two Apples over my wireless network.

I hope I never see another wintel piece of garbage again. I can foresee the day three years now when MicroSuck comes out with some of the same features and claims they invented them. By then, though, Apple will still be four or five years ahead of them, so I guess it doesn't matter.

One tiny, tiny complaint (or maybe just a warning): buy another gigabyte of memory The included 256MB is just way too little for a machine this powerful. Adding the two 512MB modules is as simple as can be (due to the beautiful industrial engineering outside and inside the box), and it made all the difference in my machine. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

This machine is absolutely the most pleasant computer to use...and as an IT director in an architecture firm I've used many a system over the years! Apple's Mac OS X Panther is truly superb on so many levels: more secure than Windows, far more stable a system, and much easier to figure out even complicated tasks. Apple does a brilliant job making hard things easy.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of all -- and one I think outweighs the pain of some missing Windows-only software -- is the fact that Macs don't catch viruses. And malicious "spyware/adware'? Forget about it, those bad guy miniprograms don't run on the Mac. The Internet feels just like it did back in the days before viruses were a plague like they are today...only much faster of course.

In order to converse with my Windows-dominated office, I got Microsoft Office for Mac (latest version). Many experts think it's better than the Windows version. I think it's a toss-up. Word, Excel, Outlook, typical office stuff all work fine in Windows World. So does online banking with Apple Safari browser -- which is way cooler than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Best of all, Apple's digital iLife Suite of applications have no competition in the Windows world. Think of iTunes on Windows and think of that for digital movies, digital pictures, dvd creation, etc etc. If you know how great iTunes is you know what I'm talking about. Apply that to the rest of your digital life and you'll soon realize that computing doesn't get any better than this.

A very happy Apple customer.

The Apple G5 is an excellent computer which doesn't have any of the problems on the Windows/PC platform, namely Microsoft Viruses, Trojans and Worms.

Someone did label the Apple G5 as the "Ferrari of Computing", an apt description.

a seemless system. I'm sure ther are some windows fans who honestly believe that a window machine and all the stability that is sacraficed is the best but once you truly get to know this machine you will never be able to go back to the countless crashes, poor functionality, joke of a plug n' play windows world. Buy some extra ram to eally start seeing the speed of this machine. It takes a lot more ram than most people are used to installing and once there is more in the machine the obvious superiorty of UNIX and Mac become apparent.

I love the G5. First of all many people belive this is a very quiet machine because thats how apple advertises it. It isn't that quiet. Althought quieter than the mirror doors (wind tunnell) it is noticably louder than my iMac. Not really a problem. Other than that there is nothing bad about this computer. I installed FCP4 with the G5 plug in and this thing is blindingly fast. Same with photoshop. No parallel with media professionals or scientists.