I have recently moved from a managed hosting service to a dedicated web server where I essentially have my own machine. This is nice because it gives me full root access to install whatever I like and the performance is superb. However I’m on my own for all of the little things that I used to take for granted.

The first thing that I faced was the need for a DNS server. I’ll leave that adventure for another post. The next thing I realized was that I am responsible for my own backups. After pricing around for a backup server I decided that it would be just as well to do the backups locally (i.e. periodically download copies of important files to a local machine. I have been living in a laptop world for the past 4 or 5 years so my desktop computer situation is sorely lacking – and for this sort of thing I do need a desktop with a persistent internet connection.

At first I was thinking of just purchasing a cheap old G4 tower (I would rather at least have a mac). I recall that they used to be pretty fast, and you don’t need much for back-ups. Then it occurred to me that if I’m going to put a desktop computer into my little one-bedroom apartment, I might as well multi-task it. Craigslist has a good selection of G4 towers in the 400MHz range for about $150 or $200. Then I saw a Quicksilver 800Mhz model for only $220, and I started to think a little bigger.

“If I had a Quicksilver model, it would run Leopard, and ….” . Well the Quicksilver guy never returned my email (of course he didn’t post a phone number), so I started to evaluate my decision to upgrade to a Quicksilver. I asked the question: “How much faster is a Quicksilver than the Sawtooth (400MHz) model?” Thanks to lowendmac.com for providing benchmarks for all of the old macs so I could make this comparison. I noticed that Lowendmac listed something called a “Geekbench” score for almost all of its computers. Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmarking program that ranks a computer’s performance on a number of factors. I then stumbled across this little goldmine of a page that compares the performance of all Macs G4 and up.

The power mac G4 450MHz scores a 309
The Quicksilver 867 MHz scores 415

This is a small improvement, but nothing to write home about.

This is where trouble started brewing in my mind. I currently use a Powerbook G4 1.67GHz for my job and my fiancée has a Macbook 2.0 GHz intel core duo, so I thought I would see how they ranked so that I could make a comparison in tangible terms that I could relate to.

My powerbook scored a 774.
The macbook scored a 2534!!!

Wow. I didn’t realize just how much a performance difference there is between the G4 models and the current Intel core duo models. There is a huge difference.

In fact, up until last night, I was living in a world where I still thought that the G5 would hold its own with just about anything out there. The single processor G5 1.8GHz scores a 1049 on the Geekbench. These machines are currently going for around $800 to $1000 on craigslist. Even the dual processor 2.7GHz only scores a 2251 Рless than my fianc̩es laptop. Just a note, the G5 duals go for anywhere from $1000 to $2500 on craigslist.

So I got another thought. For a long time, I considered the smaller computers like IMacs and Mac Minis to be inferior to the tower computers. Hence for some reason I had the idea that it was better value to buy an older G5 tower than to buy a new Mac mini. Well, the Mac mini 1.83GHz Intel core duo with 1 gig of RAM retails for $649! And its Geekbench score is 2365! Higher than the mamoth G5 of yesteryear.

In fairness the latest towers are now ranking over 10,000 on the Geekbench charts, but you’ll be spending well over $5000 to get that sort of machine. For average home use and amateur video editing I can’t imagine that the added power would warrant the added price tag.

So, long story .. well… long… I bought a new Mac Mini. It will serve as my universal business machine. I will be primarily using it for backups, but it will work out nicely for video editing, email, and pretty much everything else too.

And – its footprint is negligible. Its about the size of a cable model, and it is silent!

So where does that leave the old towers of yesteryear that people are asking $1000 and $2000 for? Sure they have more expandability, but most people out there will never want to expand. And in the era of USB2 and firewire 800 it is easy to expand externally. E.g. I’m running two external hardrives on my Mac mini for my backups.

The moral of his long, drawn-out story is to think before spending money on an older beefed up tower when you can get better performance, smaller footprint, and a sexier look from a new Mac mini.