The 15.4" Apple is $2,499 without customer care plan and only 1GB ram...
The HP comes with the same processor, more memory, 7200ROM hard drive(Apple is only 5400rpm), All-in-one printer and WITH 3 year extended warranty 
Posted on 05/27/2006 4:34:12 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Exclusive: Apple Computer is working feverishly on the design of a new Macintosh computer that the company hopes will strengthen its position in the education sector when it goes on sale later this year, AppleInsider has learned.
The new low-cost PC, which will act as a replacement for Apple's now defunct eMac line, appears to be on track to catch the latter half of the 2006 educational buying season.
Based on a series of proprietary checks, it's believed that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is aligning component suppliers for a manufacturing ramp of the computers that it plans to initiate around the September timeframe.
Technically, this means that Apple's much anticipated professional line of Intel-based Power Mac computers -- expected to make their debut this summer under the "Mac Pro" moniker -- won't be the last of the company's PC offerings to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel chips.
In keeping true to its roots of designing educational Macs as plug-and-play solutions, people familiar with Apple's product roadmap say the company is building the new Mac around an all-in-one enclosure. Though unlike the eMac, which employed cumbersome CRT-based displays, the new educational computer will follow a design pattern similar to the company's LCD-based iMac Core Duo desktops, these people say.
The departure away from CRT displays and towards pricier flat-screens means that Apple will have to carefully balance its component costs and shave as much as possible off the computer's bill-of-materials if it plans to hit a home run with educational institutions.
Although the Mac maker said its U.S. educational channel sales increased by approximately 16 percent during the first quarter of 2006 compared to the first quarter of 2005, the company has come under tremendous competitive pressure in the sector over the last several years.
"Uncertainty in this channel remains as several competitors of the company have either targeted or announced their intention to target the education market for personal computers, which could negatively affect the company’s market share," Apple has repeatedly stated in regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Although the company believes it has taken certain steps to strengthen its position in the education market, there can be no assurance that the company will be able to increase or maintain its share of the education market or execute profitably on large strategic arrangements."
But just as Apple's is expected to incur increased costs associated with transitioning its educational Mac to more modern technologies, the computer's new industrial design is expected to eliminate some of the financial complexities of the eMac. One of the pitfalls Apple discovered while building the unwieldy CRT-based Mac was that its bulbous enclosure quickly became one of -- if not the most -- expensive part of the computer to manufacturer.
In using its new iMac design as a blueprint for the eMac replacement, Apple will also save on freight and packaging costs that will result from the computer's substantially smaller footprint and lighter weight . It's also believed that the Mac will borrow industry standard components already employed by Apple's Mac mini and MacBook line of consumer PCs, enabling further cost reductions.
In April of 2004, the last time Apple introduced a major revision to the eMac, it priced models at $799 and $999. While pricing for the new educational Mac has yet to be determined, it should fall well below the company's low-end consumer iMac offering, which fetches $1299.
It's still unclear whether the computer will be made readily available for purchase by the average consumer.
When Apple introduced the eMac as a low-cost alternative to the flat-screen "sunflower" iMac in April 2002, it initially restricted sales to educational buyers. However, demand for the computers amongst consumers proved to be so strong that a month later the company made the educational Mac available to the general public.
On October 12, 2005, shortly before the computer met its ultimate demise, Apple once again restricted sales to educational institutions and returned to its "E is for Education" marketing scheme that had been attached to the product from its inception.
After exhausting much of its remaining eMac inventory to educational buyers later that year, Apple began offering its higher-margin all-in-one iMac as a replacement for the eMac. The company plans to continue to offer the iMac to its educational customers until the new Intel-based eMac successor makes its debut in the fall.
yea, the spelling problem is the fault of public education.. . :D
Check a mirror. It would explain a lot.
Make sure you have fire insurance, Apples like to catch on fire.
Here is some recent news about The Dell Dude.
I see Dell is currently having a sale on those, $250 off. Loaded like the small MacBook, not counting software and unavailable features, it is still almost $250 more. But at least for that one you do get a bigger screen.
Wait, I forgot to get Dell On Call to match Apple's unlimited phone assistance, security software, upgraded other software, and we're at almost $450 more than the Mac.
If you're talking the other 17", the XPS, at $2,845 needs to go up to over $3,600 to match the $2,800 Mac, and you're still missing some stuff. And your 1 GB of memory is in 2 DIMMS (the Mac's in one). The Dell's monitor is higher res, but I use one of those and can't stand it anyway.
Dude, he's getting slammed by a guy in the last picture. I could have gone all night without seeing the Dell spokesman in bed with a guy. I guess you can find anything by hitting FR.
2 dimms is for Dual Channel...
Linux, in particular GNOME, can be tweaked without too much effort to be as "pretty" as Mac OS X, and there's even an application available (called gDesklets) which lets you simulate the Dock.
So it is possible to have the benefits of Mac on the cheap, however it does require Linux knowledge and watching bargains like a hawk.
Regards, Ivan
yuck, the people in the new mac commerical seem gay too.. LOL
The 15.4" Apple is $2,499 without customer care plan and only 1GB ram...
The HP comes with the same processor, more memory, 7200ROM hard drive(Apple is only 5400rpm), All-in-one printer and WITH 3 year extended warranty
Well, let's see...
Mac OS .... 4.33%
MacIntel... 0.16%
Total........ 4.49% and climbing.
Your vaunted Linux, all flavors... 0.46%
Of course, these are market SALES shares of systems sold in a specific time period... April 2006... not installed base shares. I am sure you would agree that more than a half percent of computer users are on LINUX, wouldn't you?
What is really surprising about this is that someone, somewhere is STILL buying Windows 95 and ME!!!
Please provide proof that Apple's like to catch on fire... especially more than similar PC laptops. Or could it possible be defective batteries that happened to have come from the same Korean manufacturer regardless of whether it was a iBook or a Dell or an HP laptop that caught fire.
Ipod bad batteries, Macbook bad batteries, seems like a pattern with them.
I doubt they are still buying 95 & ME, they are just to poor to upgrade... I worked at a machine shop a couple of years ago and they had windows 3.1 on most of the computers in the shop.
Two DIMMs means that when you upgrade your RAM yourself (the only smart thing to do with any brand), you have to throw one away.
well when you get 2 Dimms that 1gb each why upgrade?
Now we're going with HP. Okay. I can't trust anything else you write. You didn't even look at the Apple. 120 GB @ 5400 rpm and 100 GB @ 7200 rpm are the two options, at the same price. That same switch to 7200 rpm costs $25 over at HP.
But we'll take the dv8000t up to the Mac's specs. Wow, it's $800 less! But it has a slower FSB and uses two DIMMs, and its video is 128 MB shared with 128 MB dedicated (the Mac has an x1600 with 256 MB of DDR3), only 10/100 Ethernet, no camera, no Firewire 800, no optical audio, no ambient-light keyboard and display.
So I guess there's a value judgement here, is all that worth it? Maybe not. But the kicker for this comparison would be the size. The Mac is smaller in all dimensions, almost half as thick and 16% lighter. Look at Sony -- small size carries a price premium.
I dont use firewire, or camera. I have firewire on my primary computer and turn it off in the BIOS because I dont need it, I also have a web cam that i never use so its in a box around here somewhere.
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Even if it did use 128 of system memory it would still have more memory than the Apple.. 2048MB-128MB=1920MB's of ram compared to Apples 1024MB's
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