Journal: News & Comment

Big ol' white lump

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Top 10 cool things about our new eMac:

1. The flat CRT screen rocks
2. Fast User Switching rocks
3. Exposé rocks
4. Compared to its seven-year-old, 266 MHz G3 predecessor, the 1.25 GHz G4 processor really rocks
5. FireWire backup with Carbon Copy Cloner or Retrospect rocks
6. iChat AV rocks
7. Playing DVDs rocks
8. Making our own DVDs rocks
9. GarageBand rocks (quite genuinely)
10. Airport Express/AirTunes will rock

Top 10 not-so-cool things about our new eMac:

1. It weighs 50 pounds
2. No carrying handles
3. Non-mirrored external video requires an unsupported hack
4. The location of the power button is dumb (yeah, I know, Sleep instead of Shut Down, but still...)
5. Comes with the new Apple Keyboard, not the old (and better) Apple Pro Keyboard (I put my old one on there)
6. Unlike some of those old iMacs, it generates quite a bit of heat, and so requires a fan (and you can't see through it either)
7. If I ever want to put in a bigger hard drive, it will be a major hassle
8. When using Fast User Switching, the sound from other logged-in users can leak through to the current user (such as my daughter's Jumpstart Preschool game running under Mac OS 9, which kept asking me "Do you wanna play or what?" while I was trying to write)
9. Our old LaserWriter requires a USB-to-parallel adapter
10. The new-ish Mac OS X Finder is still kinda lame

A piece of advice for eMac buyers: spring for the stand, as we did.

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