[GeronL]

That seems a bit expensive for something that'll be "obsolete" in a year or two

[coconutt2000]

There's a difference between "obsolete" and "no longer of any use".

Macs get retasked multiple times before they become obsolete and often remain relevant in a business environment for 5-10 years after it was first purchased.

[Swordmaker]

That seems a bit expensive for something that'll be "obsolete" in a year or two

For the purposes this is intended, it is right in the ballpark of comparable systems. If it makes money for you better than the alternatives, then it is worth it. For me it is way too much money. Would I like to have it? Nah... I don't need to play my organ has more ranks than your organ... and I can only read FreeRepublic so fast...

[Yossarian]

That seems a bit expensive for something that'll be "obsolete" in a year or two

And that would be a fair opinion, if the price was really that high. Methinks PC World wants to perpetuate the "Apple is overpriced" mantra.

If you go to the Apple on-line store you see that the Quad's base price is $3,299.00. The base config is

• Two dual-core 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 processors
• 512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
• 250GB Serial ATA hard drive
• 16x SuperDrive (double-layer)
• NVIDIA GeForce 6600 with 256MB GDDR SDRAM

PC World picked all the upgrades where Apple makes high margin: a super-expensive video card, 4 Gigs of overpriced ECC RAM, and the bigger and additional hard drives. Mose sane users save thousands by using a qualified 3rd party for those things, if they even need them at all.