Posted on 12/28/2004 11:09:37 PM PST by HAL9000
Amazing how the prices drop.
eMachines are great computers. Unlike other low-priced models that load up the machine with generic junk, eMachines uses name-brand components for its hard drive, graphics card, etc.
Yep. They do VERY well. My first was an old eMachines 433i, and it lasted from August 2000 to November 2003. Added memory and other stuff, and it did fine.
Then I got a new one. Never really considered another brand.
My previous model was the eMonster, purchased in 2000. First one was defective out of the box. The second model that they shipped worked like a charm until earlier this year, when the fan gave out and the system started to run sluggishly, even after a fresh format of the hard drive.
Yep - this rumor flies every expo - and doesn't appear.
Apple execs have explicitly declared that they DON'T what to have anything to do with the budget PC market.
Apple continues because of the high profit margin (as opposed to other manufacturers) of their product line. Another issue is that the "cheap-o" computer buyers often are the highest technical support expense group.
I just don't see it happening.
Well, for me, it was the need to upgrade - I figured the time to upgrade was BEFORE something happened.
These dissing matches are ridiculous, especially when they are over cheap, bottom-dwelling configurations.
None of you Mac afficionados want that piece of junk (the Apple one) and none of us PC users do either (the Dell and/or Apple piece of junk). I'm embarrased for you guys that you are even acting excited over it, a piece of junk. (Does make one wonder if you've been sneaking a belt or two of the iKool Aid!)
Apple needs to stick to the high end. These forays into cheapness require too much smoke, mirrors, and sticky tape to pull off while maintaining even a modicum of the Mac Mystique. They wind up looking pathetic and, worse, pandering (from their lofty perch).
Reports of your demise were premature, I see ;)
"Won't tell us very much about the G4, will it?"
Good catch.
iKool Aid is some potent stuff, is it not?
People might buy a cheapo PC/WinTel to Surf the web and do some word processing... but what would be the point of buying a cheapo Mac?
Quit twisting words. By "same clock" I mean "clock-for-clock," same thing if you get two at the same clock. And you can. The fastest MPC 7xxx ("G4") that Apple sells is 1.5GHz (not 1.33), and it will absolutely blow away a P4 1.5GHz. Since the original P4 was slower than even a lower-clocked PIII, this latest G4 is probably more than twice as fast as that quite old Pentium chip. But that's not a comparison of what's on the market now, so I'd consider that invalid.
Still, clock-for-clock, a G5 or G4 is faster than a Pentium, same as with AMD chips (I remember an Athlon 1100 trouncing a P4 1.5 in tests). The real reason for this is that when Intel made the P4 they counted solely on high clock speed for performance, for a long time not bothering to improve the microarchitecture to make it more efficient for each clock. This worked well for them for the couple years following the P4's release, but the speed curve got pretty shallow around 3GHz.
Following recent news, including cancellation of the 4GHz P4, Intel has pretty much admitted that this strategy has hit a wall. IBM and AMD (who have a fab technology sharing agreement) already have more efficient designs for their chips, and can slowly bump clock speeds to stay ahead of Intel while they play catch-up.
which claimed "a G4 Mac is typically about double the speed of a Pentium IV with the same clock speed." Sorry, no.
I don't agree with that either. Maybe on very specialized SIMD operations, but otherwise, no.
eMachines suck. I should know, I have one. Never again.
Safety, ease of use.
Never seen anything to substantiate that. Considering that dual 1GHz G4's tend to come up well short against a single P4 2 GHz, I'm not sure that can be substantiated. Yes, the initial P4 was slower than an equivalently clocked PIII - if you want G4 versus PIII, here you go.
It's still a Windows machine.
Good luck with the virii and spyware. I spent a fair amount of time battling them in my day. Now I'm happy to be home getting real work done with my Mac instead.
But if you love to shoot aliens, enjoy. (I don't).
D
For some odd reason, I just don't seem to get viruses... and I don't even use anti-virus software. I do, on occasion, scan my computer with Trend Micro's online virus checker.
In fact, I have read conspiracy theories that it is the virus software that attracts viruses in the first place. I guess I'll put that theory to a test, since I've just purchased Trend Micro's PC-Chilling Virus/Spam/Spyware software.
You're dreaming. For that price, you can buy a Dell with more capability (monitor, more memory, etc).
I think we'll see a lot of Dell monitors attached to those $499 Macs.
Notice in your link that in various tests the slower G4 was faster than a higher-clocked PIII. The P4 is slower per-clock than a PIII. Complete the logic.
In your Digital Video test, the G4 was hampered by a new, unoptimized operating system. In those days the OS's GUI sucked up a lot of processing power, before it was later accelerated using Quartz Extreme. Speed improvements since then have OS X being much more efficient -- they make it faster every release (unlike another OS I know).
But none of this really matters for anything, and can only be guessing. I'd need this Apple machine, a Celeron and a Sempron all together to find out how the Apple stacks up against the competition.
And it really doesn't matter because in this market speed doesn't mean much. Small, cheap, quiet, low-power consumption and able to do basic jobs is what I'd look for.
I'd characterize that page as more of a mixed bag - here are results, IIRC, on that page showing a PIII-500 comfortably exceeeding a G4 at the same speed. Anyway, I don't know how all this got going, but I do agree that this machine is not intended for the speed obsessed. If it turns out to exist at all, that is ;)
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