Yeah, by today's standards the eMacs are pretty slow, but in their day they were fairly decent machines and a lot cheaper than the iMac G4 at the time - in fact, they kept the eMacs in the range as a cheaper entry-level Mac when the iMac G4s were launched as I think the cheapest iMac was about a grand then.

But the G5s will wipe the floor with them!

There is very little a G5 won't do.

They just do it a little slower. I use a 1.9Ghz G5 single core iMac for most things. I am running 10.5 no problem at all.

Speed is all a bit relative, though. To think a G5 was the acme of Apple computing only a few short years ago, and trounced the G4s. The G4s were the acme of Apple computing only a few short years before that, and trounced the G3s. Etc.

For most people, even a G4 is adequate for most tasks. I've got a Macintosh SE30 here, and it rockets through word processing. I think it might choke on Photoshop, though.

This didn't happen in the end - I was so annoyed.

Turned up, on time, to be told "they've all been sold". The sale started at 10am and I was there a few minutes before.

I reckon staff had them saved by for themselves.

Condolences. Perhaps you should have asked your Mum to see if she could get some put by for you.
Better luck next time I guess.

Still using G5s for all our production work here and even the single processor 1.8s don't struggle too much.