How Much Processer Do I Need? Options

[pigtails]

i am looking to buy a g4 powermac to run protools on. for the time being i will be using protools free, with a view to purchasing a m box later in the year. my tutor at college told me it's best to get a g4 with 1gig processor. however i have come across someone selling a g4 powermac and it's got 800mhz processor, 512ram 40gighard drive and is running os9 and os10.2. i am under the impression that i need os9 to run certain plug ins- if u know what i mean. i dont really understand about os. the bloke says it boots up in either os9 or os10. will this make a difference as to how it will run?
i'm really confused.......please help me.

[duelectrum]

Hi, I will tell you what's my experience with ProTools Free, maybe it will help you.
I use a '98 iMac (G3 233) with 160 MB RAM. This is a pretty old computer, but I can tell you that I never had problems with it. Just when I added a soft synth (Absynth), I've got problems with getting out of CPU, but this has nothing to do with ProTools itself, but with Absynth. Consider that ProTools Free offers just 8 audio tracks, so it doesn't take lots of processor capacity to handle this.
In case you install M-Box, you will get a ProTools 5 Light Edition in the bundle, which allows you to record more audio tracks, but what takes more processing performance are the plug-ins you will use (and how much you will use simultaneously on the same track).
Anyway, I think that if you buy this computer mainly for use with this version of ProTools, you will be well served even with an used 500 MHz G3.
Even if you have OS X installed, ProTools Free and LE will just run under Mac OS 9 (classic).