God, I love CraigsList.  I found a guy on CL selling a Dell GX270 (Pentium 4HT 2.8Ghz, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, and other goodies) for a whopping $35.  I didn't have change so he got the whole $40 that came out of the ATM.  Still a screamin' deal. 

I've been experimenting lately with installing OSX on PCs using the guides from the OSX86 Project.  I have a slower Dell (2Ghz P4 – without hyperthreading) PC that I installed OSX on.  However, it ran like crrrap!  I'm really more a PC/Windows guy, but I like using Apple stuff for my music production.  So, I reluctantly installed Windows on the 2Ghz PC, and I was going to start using that.  But now with my latest CL purchase I think I should have a PC that runs OSX well enough to do some tough recording.  Nice!  The real test will be this weekend when I try to load up some old projects to see how well it runs…  if it still craps out on me…  then back to Windows I go. 

I've run Xbench on the Macs I've previously used.  Xbench is a benchmarking system performance rating application.  Basically it tests the computer and gives it a score based on how well it performs.  Here's how they've fared…

Dell Pentium 4 – 2Ghz – 1GB RAM
Score: 21.02

PowerMac G4 – 533Mhz – 768MB RAM
Score: 26.98

Mac Mini G4 – 1.4Ghz – 512MB RAM
Score: 46.51

Dell Pentium 4HT – 2.8Ghz – 1.5GB RAM
Score: 52.82

Mac Mini Intel Core Solo – 1.6Ghz – 1GB RAM
Score: 72.77

So, there ya have it.  The $40 Mac scored higher than the Mac Mini G4 (which was $300), but not as high as my fairly new work computer (which would cost closer to $500 used). 

Howie says I made a good deal.

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