By Chris Scott Barr
I’ve been an avid Mac user since my dad purchased our first one back in the early 90’s. There was a period of a few years where my house was strictly PC-based. This wasn’t because I had a change of heart, but rather due to the fact that I’m a gamer, and Macs are very pricey. If you want to pick up a Mac for under a grand, you’ll have to either go with a Mac Mini, or the low-end Macbook. Either way you choose, you’re still not going to get the same amount of power as you would with a comparably priced PC.
Another option, of course is to make your own Hackintosh, which (and I speak from experience) can be a bit of a pain to initially setup. The result is a machine that runs OSX (just as well as any machine from Apple), and is more cost-effective than a real Mac. One other choice is to order a computer from Psystar. Yes, I’m talking about the company that still has an ongoing lawsuit with Apple. They’re back in the news with their third OSX-enabled offering dubbed the Open(3).
If you say nothing else about Psystar, you have to admit that they have guts. They’re still duking it out in court with Apple about whether or not they can even sell these machines, and they push forward and release a new one. This new slim tower starts at the same price as the low-end Mac Mini and is customizable from there. So just what does that $599 get you? Here is the base configuration:
- Mac OS X Leopard v10.5
- 2.8 GHz Core2Duo E7400
- 2GB DDR2 800
- 500GB 7,200RPM SATA
- 20x DVD±RW DL
- GeForce 8400GS 256MB (single DVI)
If you want a little more power you can always opt for a Core 2 Quad Q8200 and a GeForce 9500GT card, but those will cost a bit extra. Who knows how much longer they will be able to keep selling these, so if you want one, don’t wait around to buy it.
isnt it psystar? not pystar
If they really want to rake in the cash, make a cheap Mac!
isnt it psystar? not pystar
If they really want to rake in the cash, make a cheap Mac!