Buying a used Mac mini (UK)

[capoeirista]

I contacted a guy on gumtree who is selling a used G4 mac mini (512Mb Ram, 80gig HD) in my town. The price is £200. I know it's an old machine, but I want it for my gf who needs a new machine for word/excel, internet, iTunes etc... I have a few questions for those of you who have one/know a bit more about this than I...

i) is this a fair price for the machine? The guy said it's 1 1/2 years old.

ii) I'm going to have a look at it (too many rip off merchants these days), what on site tests for it would be best?

iii) was there anything inherently unstable about this machine (hardware problems I guess)? As there is no applecare. He says it's never been needed to be serviced.

Thanks in advance.

 

[davidjearly]

I contacted a guy on gumtree who is selling a used G4 mac mini (512Mb Ram, 80gig HD) in my town. The price is £200. I know it's an old machine, but I want it for my gf who needs a new machine for word/excel, internet, iTunes etc... I have a few questions for those of you who have one/know a bit more about this than I...

i) is this a fair price for the machine? The guy said it's 1 1/2 years old.

ii) I'm going to have a look at it (too many rip off merchants these days), what on site tests for it would be best?

iii) was there anything inherently unstable about this machine (hardware problems I guess)? As there is no applecare. He says it's never been needed to be serviced.

Thanks in advance.

1. Make sure there is no cosmetic damage from drops/bumps etc. This gives an indication as to how well the unit has been looked after.

2. You will want the restore discs that came with it so that you can do a fresh install of OS X and all the bundled apps.

3. Check all ports (USB, Firewire, Ethernet, Audio) to make sure they are all fully functional as this can be a sign of logic board failure.

4. Load up each application to make sure they run smoothly.

I think that is a fair price for this machine. The G4 has plenty of horsepower in it for what you want to do.

David