Eventhough there are some tasks for wich we don't have uptodate programs (yet), a classic machine is still a very good choice for plenty tasks today. You can use PageStream to do desktop publishing on a pro level, specially if you use it in combination with ImageFX, wich rules on the image processing camp. For developing you can use CubicIDE wich has a ton of useable features (CygnusEd rules as far as resource usage is concerned , but it's not an IDE). The list goes on (I'm tired:))...
