From the press release: “Boosting performance while lowering the price of its popular desktop for home and school, Apple today announced an entirely new eMac line offering up to a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, a faster 4x SuperDrive(TM), high performance ATI Radeon 7500 graphics, up to 80GB hard drives and internal support for AirPort Extreme wireless networking. Featuring a 17-inch flat CRT and a remarkably compact all-in-one design that is even less deep than the original iMac, the most affordable PowerPC G4 system now starts at just $799.” Update: New keyboard for eMacs. Read on.
| The new eMac | |||||
| 800 MHz G4 | 128MB RAM | 40GB | CD-ROM | ATI Radeon 7500, 32 MB | $799 |
| 1 GHz G4 | 128MB RAM | 60GB | DVD-ROM/CD-RW | ATI Radeon 7500, 32 MB | $999 |
| 1 GHz G4 | 256MB RAM | 80GB | 4x DVD-R/CD-RW | ATI Radeon 7500, 32 MB | $1,299 |
Buying an eMac from a reseller instead from Apple directly, should be a better idea, as they offer free RAM upgrades (256 MB or 512 MB modules), a free printer and/or a free USB floppy drive. Check online for such offers.
The new iMac features the new Mac keyboard which includes 2 USB ports (some people are not happy with this new design though as you probably are not able to type ‘flat’, which is what prevents wrist problems).
I live in Finland, in the European Union. eMachines aren’t available, neither are HP Pavilions. The most popular PC brands are Compaq Presario and Fujitsu-Siemens.
Their bundle, separately 170 ? monitors are 17″ non-flat 1024×768 (1280×1024 unusable 64 Hz).
Cheapest Dell monitor is a 15″ non-flat 180 ? 800×600 75 Hz (1024×768 unusable 60 Hz). Apple had that kind of monitors before iMacs, in gray Performas, in the mid-nineties.
Most 17″ Dell monitors are non-flat 215, 230 & 250 ? max 1024×768.
The Dell monitor comparable to eMac’s costs 300 ? (17″ flat 1280×1024 75 Hz).
The question marks should be Euro symbols.
Michael said:
Why will 64 bits not reach this price range? Moore’s Law will make low end 64 bit cores very cheap within a year. Many leading foundries will have 90nm fabs capable of turning out cheap 64 bit processors this year.
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Not saying they won’t be necessarily cheap(ish) to make; they very well might be. But those costs are most definitely not going to be transferred to buyers within a year. The marketing world doesn’t work that way.
That’s why I predict a 2-3 year slow phasing-in of the new chips from high-end to (eventual) entry level stage. This goes for AMD too. I don’t expect entry-level 64-bit chips from them for another 2 years, minimum (to replace their Athlon XP line). Could be dead wrong but I doubt it
because it is all psycosematic
I disagree with Joe on the introduction rate of 64 bit chips from Apple and AMD. Both companies have a perceived architectural disadvantage in the market place relative to Intel. That is, Intel pumped the speed up on the P4 and neither AMD nor Apple/Motorola could keep up. Note that while there are legitimate technical issues to the disadvantage, I believe most of the problems Apple and AMD have are actually marketing in nature. The entry level buyer sees the faster chip frequency from Intel and thinks it must be the faster chip.
While I doubt the new IBM PowerPC 970 will completely close the GHz gap, the fact that it can be marketed as a 64 bit chip could a powerful message for Apple. So if manufacturing costs allow it, I believe Apple will market system based on these chips as competitively as possible. I suspect that we will see a Apple inserting the 970 into PowerMacs starting at $1500, and ranging up from there.
I doubt you will see the 970 appearing in iMac or eMac in the first year or two. However Apple might start putting faster G4s into these units and if possible lowering the price on them. From a marketing view the different chip helps define the different market segment for the product
Again this is all assuming that IBM manufacturing processes allow the chips to be sold at a low enough price.
I promise that when I’ll have enough money I’ll buy an apple…till then stick to x86 with linux…
to a HD Amiga FF yelds 1760k, and about 1920k using DiskSpare Format.
Pity that my drive is incompatable with DiskSpare!
The SAME drive can Read/Write to 1440k FAT32, so can be used for data exchange with a WinBox or a Floppy-equipped Mac!
By taking a JPG/PNG or GIF image to a Net-connected PC I can do an upload that my own browser can’t handle! Don’t try to convince me that 3.5″ Floppies are dead – NB. I still have a working CBM Datasette!!!
(FYI, OLD Floppy Disks are more reliable than current bought ones)