G3 600 Vs. G4 400-500

if its a g4 under about 500 then the imac would be faster but if its over then the g4 would be faster.

In OS X, the G4 would have a general advantage. In OS 9, the G3 would be slightly better.

G4 would only be slightly less fast if it was 100MHz or more slower. Don't forget that the G4 tower is built better overall; faster IDE bus and so forth.

Even a 400MHz G4 will be faster then the 600MHz iMac. The 600MHz iMac uses a 750cxe which is by far the slowest G3 ever made. It only has a 256K L2 cache. The Later 750FX is MUCH faster (do to cache and other reasons). The 7400/7410's (350-533) all have 1MB L2 caches. Plus the advantage of altivec which is used to a fair extent for various things in OSX. Not to mention video, expeansions lots, etc.

That 750FX was a really good design. IBM could have gone places if they put an Altivec-compatable unit in that.

That 750FX was a really good design. IBM could have gone places if they put an Altivec-compatable unit in that.

Even without it, its a great chip. The 750GX that is available now for PMG3's as an upgrade at 1.1GHz out performs the Sonnet 1GHz G4 upgrade in just about every real world test (granted this is partially because the B&W has to have its bus declocked to 66MHz for it to work). But even in a beige, that 1MB of on die L2 really speeds things up for it.

or maybe a cheap 2-2.6Ghz PC

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

If that PC has a Celeron, it'll be durn slow. If it's a P4/AMD it should be just fine. If you've got the monitor/kbd/ms I'd go for the mini... I'm saving my nickles.

Don't even think of getting a PC. The last one I had fried my new 24 in flat-screen monitor! Thats Dell quality for ya!

And I'd never touch a Pentium or an AMD!

Daniel