is the PPC Mac still usable?

I'm back to using the PPC Macs again just for fun. Namely the G5 iMac 10.4 and recently donated G4 iBook 10.5.

The designs are quaint and with the right mix of software, can still be quite a usable computer. Most applications are on the internet (and I refrain from using the word "cloud").

 Optimised Firefox


So the first thing to do to make this computer usable is to get the "latest" and "optimised" browser which I downloaded from http://rpm-mozilla.org.uk


Media Player

If Quicktime isn't able to play a media file, I like VLC and you can still get a PPC version from their download page. Select the Universal version.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html



Remote Desktop Client

To use other applications and get more power, we probably have to connect to our main system.

We will need a remote desktop tool for that. We could use the standard VNC to another machine on the home network which is great. This feature is available from finder, you need to enable the "Connect" button with a right click on the top of the Finder window. Select "Customize Toolbar". If you don't have a right click, it's "Ctrl - click". Add the "Connect" button to the menu.

To connect to a VNC services type in "vnc://:", e.g. vnc://192.168.0.10:5901

Mapping a Network Storage - We can also use this to map to our NAS or file shares by "smb://:" e.g. smb://192.168.0.10/share

However if the server we want to access is far away and accessible via ssh, we can use use No Machine Client, the requirement is that you need X11 for it to work. (refer below)

http://www.nomachine.com/download-package.php?Prod_Id=3834


Useful Utilities for Geeks

• Terminal

Need I say more?

• X11

10.5 users can download from here. http://roundhere.net/journal/install-x11-on-mac-os-x-10-4-tiger-without-dvd/