UPDATED: New Power Macs - faster, cheaper

 

Gallery

Posted on 28 Jan 2003 at 14:53

Apple has introduced a new top-spec Power Mac, and drastically cut the prices of its desktop professional machines.

The dual 1.42GHz Power Mac will sell for just £2099 (inc. VAT), £600 cheaper than the dual 1.25GHz machine it supersedes.

The dual 1.25GHz Mac is now £1599, an incredible £1100 reduction. The revamped range is completed with a single 1GHz machine for £1149.

All three models include faster FireWire, faster wireless and support for Bluetooth. FireWire 800 doubles data transfer speed and support for AirPort Extreme offers wireless networking at five times faster than before.

The 1GHz 'Fast' machine has a 1Mb L3 cache, 256Mb of DDR266 RAM memory, a 60Gb hard drive, a DVD/CD-RW 'combo' drive and nVidia GeForce4 MX graphics with 64Mb of DDR video RAM.

The dual 1.25GHz 'Faster' machine has 1Mb of L3 cache per processor, 256Mb of DDR333 RAM, an 80Gb hard drive, a DVD/CD-RW 'combo' drive and ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics with 64Mb of DDR video RAM.

The dual 1.42GHz 'Fastest' machine has 2Mb of L3 cache per processor, 512Mb of DDR333 RAM, a 120Gb hard drive, the new 4x DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive and ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics with 64Mb of DDR video RAM.

Apple has also pre-configure an 'Ultimate' version of the dual 1.42GHz, with 1.5Gb of RAM, 128Mb of video memory, built-in Bluetooth and AppleCare protection.

All these basic configurations can be customised either online at the AppleStore or by any Apple dealer. The 1.42GHz machines will not be shipping for between four and six weeks.

These Macs will only boot into Mac OS X. Special OS 9-bootable versions of the dual 1.25GHz are available through the AppleStore, though you will have to pay considerably more.

Author: Simon Aughton