Opinion by PC Magazine: Ten to Avoid--The Worst Products of the Year

This is rather amusing on a couple levels. Ahem...

Desktop PC: For Apple, the entry-level eMac really does represent Think Different. That's because for a company that prides itself on quality, this computer is different. As in bad. On the plus side, it's stylish. On the downside, it's slow, underpowered, and pathetic. The 40GB hard drive will fill up quickly, the lack of a DVD burner makes offloading files impossible, and the Radeon 9200 graphics card won't even run this fall's hot Mac games. And at around $800, this eMac ain't cheap. If you're considering a home Apple, think different. Buy a Dell. Or be prepared to spend a lot more for an acceptable Apple computer. Our Desktop Product Guide can lead you to the best Apples, along with the best of the rest.

I have two clear issues with this, other's I may or may not mention while typing, if they come to me. To begin...

1)  For starters, the eMac he's describing has better statistics than my current computer in every area. I own a two year old (almost 2, will be 2 on Christmas) iBook G3. Now, last time I checked, the only major problem I had with my system is lack of hard drive space (the internal HD is smaller than the eMac's 40GB as described).

The solution: Buy an external hard drive. The thing is, with an iBook, you need to buy a small self powered external hard drive, as since it's portable, the drive would need to follow the computer. This is a bit of a pain, and as of now my only solution is use my older external HD which is set up at home as a storage space for things I don't use very often...

When you compare this to the eMac, however, take in to account the fact that my old external hard drive I have at home would be perfectly adequate for use on the eMac. Being the eMac was meant to sit on a desk (aka Desktop PC), the cheap external firewire hard drive can sit next to it for eternity. Problem solved for less than $100...

2)  A thing to note, which is rather evident, is that the eMac is more than qualified for the exact purpose it was designed: Education!. The evident part is evident due to the first letter of the machine's name: e. Being my iBook G3 is more than adequate for this purpose, the eMac is definitely adequate. Last time I checked, school's main goal while buying computers was not to make sure they could run Doom 3...

Up until Apple's recent release of the new iMac, the computer on my wish list was in fact an eMac. I preferred the eMac to the previous iMac with the moving lamp head...


If the guy would have spent a second thinking these things out, he could have publicly avoided making such an ass out of himself. Being his motives seemed to have little to do with what he actually wrote (since much of it was inaccurate to say the least), he obviously didn't care...