Dual 800 MHz Power Mac G4

While I sincerely doubt there are a whole lot of Macintosh boosters among Tom's Faithful, it's a good idea to keep up on the specs for new machines that come out of what's left of the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker's back rooms if only to talk the right talk when you utter your personal sound of disdain and roll your eyes. Apple just started shipping its new Power Mac G4 computer amped with dual 800 MHz PowerPC G4 processors. The box includes Apple's SuperDrive, a combination CD-RW/DVD-R drive that lets users burn DVDs that can be played in consumer DVD players. Apple says the 800 MHz dual processor Power Mac G4 runs apps like Adobe's Photoshop up to 83 percent faster than a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4-based PC (yeah, but what about an overclocked P3 dualie?). The machine includes 256K on-chip level 2 backside cache and 2MB of level 3 cache per processor; 256MB of PC133 SDRAM memory; an 80GB Ultra ATA/66 hard disk drive; NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with TwinView graphics and 64MB video SDRAM for dual monitor support; SuperDrive combination CD-RW/DVD-R optical drive; two FireWire and USB ports; five slots, including four full-length 64 bit PCI slots at 33 MHz and one 4x AGP slot; 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet, and a 56K V.90 modem. The new G4 is goes for a whopping retail price of $3,499, which, I'm sad to say, is more than my car cost. However, when it doesn't start, I'm not subjected to that irritating little bomb icon.