My G4 says it's a G3???

It seems you have yourself a Yikes G4 there. They were the first Mac with a G4 and they were built on the motherboard of a G3. It was bascially a B&W G3 with a G4 ZIF in it. Or you have a B&W G3 that someone installed a G4 into. Same thing really.

Your right. I didn't know that, so that's another G3. That means my Macintosh "G" collection isn't necessarily complete, a beige G3, a B&W G3, another B&W G3(I'm counting the G4 I have as a G3 since the motherboards are basically exactly alike), and a G5.
Now my goal is to get my hands on a later G4, like the one in my school's computer lab sitting in the corner doing absolutely nothing.

Hold out for a Quicksilver or a MDD (Mirrored Drive Doors). They're much more stable machines than the Yikes, Sawtooth, and Gigabit models. The MDDs are LOUD, though. If you're using this for any kind of audio or A/V setup, consider a Quicksilver.

Yep, a Yikes! will call itself a G3. The one difference between the B&W and the Yikes! is the B&W has an ADB port, so given the choice between a B&W motherboard and Yikes! motherboard, I'd rather have the B&W so I could still use ADB devices. Apple did a creepy thing with the B&W motherboard. Knowing that it would very soon come out with the G4, it built in a G4 block into the B&W motherboard simply to keep people with a B&W from buying a third party G4 ZIF, thus, keeping the value of the new G4's high, and the Yikes! was nothing but a B&W with a G4 processor. Apple went from producing the last of the Beige G3's, through the B&W's, the Yikes!, to the Sawtooth in a little over a year, or something like that, so people who bought B&W's, like myself, saw our brand new proud possession change to obsolete in the blink of an eye. It was just like that commercial of the guy driving down the street with his new, still in its box, B4 computer in the back seat of his convertible, and looking up and seeing a billboard for the new B5. I'm sure they came up with the idea for that commercial based on the B&W. To put a G4 ZIF in a B&W you must first install a software patch which the third party ZIF manufacturers eventually came up with.

Get your hands on a post recall PSU, and change out the main fan. They can be whisper quiet. Mine is, and I LOVE it. The MDD is the way to go, if you want a G4.

I dunno, I'm partial to the Quicksilver. At my old job - I had one in my office, and I now have one that was given to me. I love it. The MDD's are cool, though I just haven't spent as much time with them to be so fond.Great solid machines, less troublesome than the Sawtooth G4 and B&W g3 that came before.

Love it.