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I too have an old slow mac. I didn't want to buy at the end of the power pc cycle, thought a quad is sure temping. But to buy a brand new chip on a brand new platform? Yonahs anticapated upgraded version is only 6 months away (when it will be 64 bit and capable of virtualizied cpus, plus fixed erratas, probably more ghz). After Intel builds these new 65 mm cpus for 6 months it'll be a different world. Then Apple and developers will have caught up a bit, too.
My solution has been last summer to upgrade my ancient 6 year old (unbelievably old for a computer!!!) 450 DP with a dual 1.6 G4 (running 1.8) from gigadesigns as a holding patern. I figure it will be kind of a "throw away" investment that will buy some time, like a year, then the machine will still be very usable when I hand it over to my nieces to use when I finally buy new :) amazingly, this RELIC of a computer runs GREAT and benchmarks close to a G5 desktop! One consideration as well I didn't have to re-buy new big harddrives, ram (already had 4 300gigs w/ ide card + 2 gigs of ram) had a firewire 800/usb2 card too was set there as well). So I figure I get some more use out of computer that's otherwise worth next to nothing, while Apple and Intel do their development thing for possibly a year.
But if you HAVE to buy, then of course buy.
Apple is selling nice, very cheap G4 lapstops cheap ($1000up) in their Special Deals section, as well as amazingly good G5 desktop deals, and these are like to get somewhat cheaper as they start shipping MacBooks. So there is some temptation to buy a cheap laptop (or desktop as a stopgap measure and be able to productive for a year or two. But then after new ram, harddrives, software... well it adds up. Still great gear, but...
We all know the future is Intel and eventually buying anything else you're going to be orphaned, esp 2-3 years plus. New Power PC vs. new Intel, no question Intel (unless other issues play into it, i.e. software). I was around for the Power PC switch so this is like deja vous for me :)
Overall, kind of a hard time to buy. I think that's why so many of us are on the fence for know.
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