Hi,

I used to use macs up until the end of the Mac 2si era, and loved them.
Unfortunately I haven't used a mac in a long time now, but was in the market
for a 2nd PC for my wife/child that we could put in our family room. Since
it will be in a central location, I figure I'll use it quite a bit myself
also. Originally I thought about just getting something equivalent to what I
already have in my home office - a P4 1.7ghz, 512mb, 60gb machine, except
perhaps with a smaller hard drive.

After seeing an ad for the new eMac 1.25ghz for $799, I'm intrigued.

Although it is a few hundred more than I wanted to spend on a new computer,
if macs are still as great as they used to be then I think it would be worth
it. My main concern is though - is 1.25ghz and 128mb (that's what these new
eMacs come with) fast enough for internet, email, some music, quicken, and
maybe garageband (I record my guitar into my current PC)?

$799 would get me a top-notch PC in terms of specs, so I'm hesitant to plunk
down that much money on something that is barely getting along after a year.
Please, no PC vs Mac flames - I am honestly looking for the best fit for me
and my family, on a limited budget.

I plan on going to the local Apple store (I'm fortunate enough to have one
at the mall near me) and play with the new eMac for a bit and see if it is
sluggish at all. Hopefully they won't have it locked down with an optimized
demo and I'll be able to at least surf the web and maybe demo garageband or
some other app that might test the specs.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

On 5/23/04 9:26 PM, in article 43dsc.8283$yc4.1718@nwrdny02.gnilink.net,
"mark" <Ih8SpamminScum@especiallyyours.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I used to use macs up until the end of the Mac 2si era, and loved them.
> Unfortunately I haven't used a mac in a long time now, but was in the market
> for a 2nd PC for my wife/child that we could put in our family room. Since
> it will be in a central location, I figure I'll use it quite a bit myself
> also. Originally I thought about just getting something equivalent to what I
> already have in my home office - a P4 1.7ghz, 512mb, 60gb machine, except
> perhaps with a smaller hard drive.
>
> After seeing an ad for the new eMac 1.25ghz for $799, I'm intrigued.
>
> Although it is a few hundred more than I wanted to spend on a new computer,
> if macs are still as great as they used to be then I think it would be worth
> it. My main concern is though - is 1.25ghz and 128mb (that's what these new
> eMacs come with) fast enough for internet, email, some music, quicken, and
> maybe garageband (I record my guitar into my current PC)?
>
> $799 would get me a top-notch PC in terms of specs, so I'm hesitant to plunk
> down that much money on something that is barely getting along after a year.
> Please, no PC vs Mac flames - I am honestly looking for the best fit for me
> and my family, on a limited budget.
>
> I plan on going to the local Apple store (I'm fortunate enough to have one
> at the mall near me) and play with the new eMac for a bit and see if it is
> sluggish at all. Hopefully they won't have it locked down with an optimized
> demo and I'll be able to at least surf the web and maybe demo garageband or
> some other app that might test the specs.
>
> Thanks in advance for any advice.
>
>
1.25 GHz is fast enough for what you have listed. I would get an additional
512MB ram, though.
--
Brian Ehni

mark wrote:

> I plan on going to the local Apple store (I'm fortunate enough to have one
> at the mall near me) and play with the new eMac for a bit and see if it is
> sluggish at all. Hopefully they won't have it locked down with an optimized
> demo and I'll be able to at least surf the web and maybe demo garageband or
> some other app that might test the specs.

I dunno about demo-ing garageband, but when I was shopping
for my Mac, the ones in the store weren't in any kind of
demo-mode...you could do anything on them, and they had fast
internet connnections. They didn't have X11 installed, though.

IMHO, 128MB isn't enough memory, and a 17in CRT is kinda small.

Duke

"mark" <Ih8SpamminScum@especiallyyours.net> writes:
>
> After seeing an ad for the new eMac 1.25ghz for $799, I'm intrigued.


Not a bad starter machine. I would up the memory from 256M to 512M
for best performance, but that's about all I'd consider a really
important upgrade. It will cost less if you upgrade the memory
yourself than if you buy the memory pre-loaded from Apple.

Everything else should be just fine.

According to:
http://www.apple.com/emac/specs.html

an eMac uses ordinary 333MHz DDR (PC2700) memory. It has two memory
slots, each one can accept up to 512M (for a total capacity of 1G).
The DIMM sockets are user accessible.

Today's memory price from crucial.com lists 512M DIMMs for $96, and
256M DIMMs for $52.

> Although it is a few hundred more than I wanted to spend on a new
> computer, if macs are still as great as they used to be then I think
> it would be worth it. My main concern is though - is 1.25ghz and
> 128mb (that's what these new eMacs come with) fast enough for
> internet, email, some music, quicken, and maybe garageband (I record
> my guitar into my current PC)?

If the ad you're looking at is charging $799 for an eMac with 128M,
throw that ad away.

I just visited Apple's web site and their direct-purchase store shows
the base $800 eMac as including 256M of memory. This should be the
price you pay at an Apple Store as well.

> $799 would get me a top-notch PC in terms of specs

Not any PC that I'd consider "top-notch". I've been pricing PCs for
friends and family for some time now. You can get a PC with monitor
for $800, but I wouldn't want to use it. Every one I've looked at
needs at least a memory and hard drive upgrade to be usable. And and
upgrade from Windows XP Home edition to Professional. All this
together pushes the price to around $1000.

And several of these "deals" include a really lousy monitor. The one
in the eMac is very high quality.

And in the end, that system will not be "top-notch" but average.

IMO, a good PC costs at least $1000, plus the price of a monitor. I
recently paid $1200 (plus monitor, plus Windows XP Pro license) to
build a machine that I would consider "top-notch" (Athlon 64 3200+,
512M RAM, 200G SATA disk, Radeon 9800 video.)

> I plan on going to the local Apple store (I'm fortunate enough to
> have one at the mall near me) and play with the new eMac for a bit
> and see if it is sluggish at all. Hopefully they won't have it
> locked down with an optimized demo and I'll be able to at least surf
> the web and maybe demo garageband or some other app that might test
> the specs.

The Apple Stores are pretty good with that. You should be able to
play with working system and not a demo. And feel free to ask
questions - their staff (usually) know the product pretty well.

-- David

In article <9o-dnW29JfQoYSndRVn-tw@io.com>,
Duke Robillard <duke@NOSPAMio.com> wrote:

> mark wrote:
>
> > I plan on going to the local Apple store (I'm fortunate enough to have one
> > at the mall near me) and play with the new eMac for a bit and see if it is
> > sluggish at all. Hopefully they won't have it locked down with an optimized
> > demo and I'll be able to at least surf the web and maybe demo garageband or
> > some other app that might test the specs.
>
> I dunno about demo-ing garageband, but when I was shopping
> for my Mac, the ones in the store weren't in any kind of
> demo-mode...you could do anything on them, and they had fast
> internet connnections. They didn't have X11 installed, though.
>
> IMHO, 128MB isn't enough memory, and a 17in CRT is kinda small.
>
> Duke
>


X11 is either on the developer CD or is a non-default option at
installation. But its not the kind of the thing needed for home use.

--
Walt Sellers
Computer Engineer For Hire
www.VirtualOutpost.com
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