“It’s not just Windows boxes in the $1K Club anymore. Apple, despite its reputation as a provider of premium products at premium prices (with premium hype), makes a desktop machine, the eMac, that costs significantly less than its long-necked flat-screen iMacs. Like the iMac, the eMac runs on a G4 PowerPC processor, but it uses a built-in 17-inch C.R.T. monitor,” J.D. Biersdorfer writes for the New York Times.
“Once relegated to the education market, the eMac is gaining attention as an affordable all-in-one system for Apple fans. In fact, Apple upgraded its eMac line last week, boosting the G4 processor to 1.25 gigahertz in its $999 model (with a DVD burner and an 80-gigabyte hard drive) and in its $799 edition (with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive and a 40-gigabyte hard drive). Both models come with 256 megabytes of memory and a 32-megabyte ATI Radeon 9200 video card and now have U.S.B. 2.0 ports (standard on most new PC’s but late to arrive on Macs) mixed in with those iPod-friendly FireWire ports that also make connecting a digital camcorder a breeze,” Biersdorfer writes.
“The eMac comes with Mac OS X 10.3, Apple’s elegant yet simple operating system, and the company’s iLife ’04 suite: the self-explanatory iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD and the newcomer GarageBand, which lets you cook up personal audio compositions till the cows boogie home. There’s no free Microsoft ride here, but you do get AppleWorks, the Macintosh word-processing and spreadsheet software that will let you save files in PC-compatible formats, and a 30-day test drive of Microsoft Office for the Mac. World Book Encyclopedia 2004, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 and Quicken 2004 for Mac add to the onboard software selection,” Biersdorfer writes.
“The eMac was by far the easiest to set up of all the machines I tried out – power cord, keyboard, mouse and network cable, and you’re all plugged in. (Not that a PC setup is hard anymore, since with most systems you get a color poster and colored-coded cables to guide you.) Software compatibility is still the Mac’s Achilles’ heel, however, as many programs are still Windows-only and gamers often face a frustrating lag until popular titles get ported over from their PC versions,” Biersdorfer writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Two points to be made here: 1) If you want to play games, get a PlayStation and you’ll have a better time, and 2) There are currently over 18,000 Macintosh applications and software titles, so even if you find a piece of Windows-only software, odds are high that there is a Mac title that will do the same or a better job for you. Click here to browse over 18,000 Mac software applications (including games!). Bonus 3rd point: If you are a Windows user thinking about adding a Mac to your computing arsenal, DO IT! You can thank us later.