New York Times Looks At Cheap PCs, Including eMacs

A pple only makes expensive computers.

Those of you with an eMac may take exception to that statement; you know that Appleis low-end desktop is anything but low, except when it comes to price. Starting at a skimpy US$799, the eMac does not skimp on features. We know because weive compared them with comparably equipped PCs and the eMac fairs quite well, especially after the latest round of upgrades and price reductions from Apple.

You donit have to take our word for it, however; check out what the New York Times has to say when it compared several low-cost computers, including the eMac, the a recent edition of Circuits. From the article:

But itis 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.

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 PCs but late to arrive on Macs) mixed in with those iPod-friendly FireWire ports that also make connecting a digital camcorder a breeze.

The eMac comes with Mac OS X 10.3, Appleis elegant yet simple operating system, and the companyis iLife i04 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. Thereis 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 Hawkis Pro Skater 4 and Quicken 2004 for Mac add to the on board software selection.

Thereis more in the full review at the New York Times. Note that the New York Times requires a free registration.