Gary
Psystar a company has of late been putting out advertisements on a three hundred and ninety nine dollars computer which they refer to as the ‘OpenMac’. The OpenMac they say is a Leopard compatible Mac built from normal parts that would make up any other Personal computer. The following specifications constitute a tower computer which is available for the specified three hundred and ninety nine dollars - It has a 2.2 Giga hertz Intel Coe 2 Duo, has a 2 Giga bytes of DDR2 667 memory, a 20x DVD+/-R drive, four USB ports in total and in addition to all this, a 250 Giga byte 7200 RPM Drive.
As they have been saying, most of the components they have used can be upgraded for better pieces. The graphics card used for example can be updated by you with just a hundred and fifty five dollars more and you would get a GeForce 8600GT 512MB graphics card.
Apple Mac being as expensive as it is, Psystar have come up with this cheaper alternative. “When comparing base configurations, the Mac Mini costs 150% of the price of the OpenMac while offering poorer performance, smaller storage space, and RAM. Not only that but the Mac Mini doesn’t have the option for an nVidia GeForce 8600 video card like the OpenMac does so playing games on it is a lost cause.”
With the least possible patching necessary, they say, the system can be made compatible for the Leopard. What’s more, they also offer Leopard pre installed if that is what you want. This they report, they can make possible by using those particular parts which are widely known to be compatible with Leopard Mac OS X and in addition to that, an EFI emulator. With the EFI Emulator, it would be possible to install the Leopard’s kernel straight from the DVD which you would purchase at the Apple store (of course leaving aside a few drivers to ensure smooth functioning and proper booting).
June 17, 2008
Wow! Even if it’s a lot cheaper compared to the original one’s the specs are not bad. They call it open Mac, I was wondering if I can now install two operating systems on it. I’m thinking of installing Windows Vista and Mac OS on it using dual boot software.
June 24, 2008
Wow, that’s a huge price difference but not too too much of a difference in the specs. I’d definitely be interested in trying one of these out for my daughter who needs a new pc badly for school work and her “kid” games she loves to play so much.