Should I buy a powermac G4 or a black macbook?

The MacBook is far more futureproof than the PowerMac. Already some applications are ceasing support for the Power PC platform, and Mac OS X won’t support Power PC for much longer either.

I’d say the MacBook will give you more life and power than the G4, and reselling the MacBook would probably get you more of your money back than reselling a G4 would. Then again, sometimes laptops have problems, and if portability is not really something you need I’d look into a different desktop Mac model.

Richardhenry got it, OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) will not support PowerPC processors, which the Powerbook is packin’. It can be expensive, but it’s really not worth skimping. I got a Mac Mini with a Core solo, and it’s one of the biggest computer mistakes I ever made.

Currently, I would look into something like the Asus EEE 1002HA. It is looking very nice, is half the price is an ultra portable and runs Mac OS X still.

“Runs Mac OS X”

I disagree. Use Linux or Windows on a laptop like that; you cannot reliably run any architecture intensive software on a Hackintosh, and you can’t rely on future updates. Don’t bother hacking Mac OS X onto a non-Apple device if you actually plan on using it day-to-day.

One exception to what Richard said. Psystar sells non-Apple hardware that runs OSX flawlessly, but they don’t produce laptops, which it looks like you want. The company is a bit shady, though. If you want to go that route, buy one soon, as Apple is about to hand their ass to them in court.

Edit to minimize multiple posts: I think that Psystar uses all the same components that apple does, and reviews say that all updates and versions of OSX run as if on Apple hardware.

“Psystar sells non-Apple hardware that runs OSX flawlessly…” but it won’t be supported for very long and is no means guaranteed. It’s only a matter of time before a bad update screws up your computer, or you are unable to run the next version of OS X.

If you want to use OS X, you should use a Mac. It’s not a good situation when the company who writes your operating system would love for it to unexpectedly ass rape the computer it’s installed on.

You can fairly easily hack some of the new netbooks (like the MSI wind) to run OSX. All you need is a little xomputer knowledge, a USB dongle, and a hacked copy of OSX.

@richardhenry I have a Asus EEE 904HA and I run OS X on it flawlessly. Have been using it for a month or so now too. I also get away with using Photoshop and Xcode on it just fine. I use it day to day in all my classes for taking notes too. I don’t see how running OS X on a non-Apple device is a problem.

@Overshard
It becomes a problem when your computer won’t boot after you install a security update. Hopefully you have backups of all your notes.

Sure, it works. But I would never trust it.

I never trust any computer. A security update could break anything and hard drive failures are all to often in laptops. Updates have been known to crash Microsoft Windows in the past. I keep all my computers doing nightly backups to a central server running raid 5. I also use Dropbox for quick note sharing between all my computers.

Never trusting computers really is the way to go. That’s the one thing I’ve learned in all my computer years – computers break, it’s when not if. That’s one reason why I’ve been using a Windows desktop for the past many years, it’s easier for me to swap out a hardware component than it is with a Mac due to the sheer number of PC part vendors compared to Mac vendors.

Another vote for MacBook.