Introduction
About a month and a half ago, I received the following equipment for evaluation:
I will review these products both individually and as an entire system in this article. This test system is graciously on loan to us from The Chip Merchant! Here are some quick technical specifications before I begin. Absorb them now, because I'm not going to go into too much detail since all this information is available at Apple's web site. But I do want to give a quick technical overview of the products for those not familiar with them. These specs apply specifically to the hardware I received.
| Power Mac G4 Cube | |
|---|---|
| CPU | 450MHz PowerPC G4, 1MB L2 cache at 225MHz |
| RAM | 1.5GB RAM via 3 PC100 512MB 2-2-2 SDRAM DIMMs |
| HD | Maxtor 20GB ATA-66 |
| Removable | Matshita DVD-ROM (on the same ATA bus as the HD) |
| Video | ATI Rage 128 Pro with 16MB VRAM on an AGP 2x bus |
| Ports | 2 USB ports, each on an independent 12Mbps bus; 2 IEEE-1394 (FireWire) ports sharing a single 400Mbps bus; 1 10/100Base-T Ethernet Port; 1 internal 56K V.90/K56flex modem; 1 Apple Display Connector (ADC) port; 1 VGA port; 28V DC power input |
| Price | $1,799.00 plus $4,350 for the RAM, minus $300 when purchased with an Apple display. |
| Apple Cinema Display | |
|---|---|
| Screen | 22-inch diagonal, digital active-matrix liquid crystal display, 1600x1024 native resolution |
| Ports | 1 Apple Display Connector (ADC) port; 2 USB hub ports |
| Price | $3,999 |
I'll revisit some of these items later, but this article is not going to be about technical specifications or performance measurements. Like the Cube system itself, this article will be about form and function...and the price of each.
Also note that I previewed the Cube in some detail in my recent MacWorld Expo 2000 article, and I don't plan on covering the same ground twice. Please take the time now to go back and read that section of the article if you're not already up to speed on the basic features of the Cube.
A note about the photography: I tried taking many pictures for this article with my cheap auto-focus camera, but it's simply not designed to take close-up product photographs. You'll see a few of my own pictures in this article, but most of them were pulled from Apple's product photography and are copyright © Apple Computer Inc.
reader comments
0