The Performance Edge: iMac
Clone vs The Real Thing - A Performance Evaluation
You have probably heard by now of the Future
Power iMac knock off Called the E-Power that was on show
at the recent PC Expo. Slated to be for sale in early fall,
the E-Power will sport an Intel Celeron processor and run Windows
98.
In looks the computer is almost a complete copy of the iMac
and Future Power is hoping to ride the iMac's popularity to
profitability by offering its look-alike at a lower price
point. We don't think this will happen however since Apple
will most likely sue the company before they get the first
E-Power machine out the door. Future Power is hanging their
hopes on the fact that the inclusion of a floppy drive in
the E-Power will provide enough of a differentiation from
the iMac that they won't face legal problems - good luck!
Though we don't think that the E-Power will see the light
of day, we thought it would be fun to look at what the performance
difference between it and the current iMac would be. For the
E-Power's configuration we choose the configuration they have
posted on their web site, which they say may not be the configuration
that ships in the fall and may not be the exact configuration
they showed off at PC Expo.
iMac
E-Power
Processor
G3/333Mhz
Celeron 400Mhz
RAM
32MB
64MB
Hard Drive
6GB UDMA
6.4GB UDMA
Floppy
None
Yes
Graphics
6MB ATI Rage Pro
4MB SGRAM 3D AGP
CD-ROM
24X
40X ?
Modem
56K
56K
Ethernet
10/100
10/100
Ports
2 USB
2 USB
Monitor
15"
15"
Cost
$1199
$799
The limited benchmarks below are based on
SPEC95,
the industry standard for measuring processor performance.
These benchmarks are a little speculative because it is unknown
what the L2 cache scheme is on the E-Power machine. They are,
however, the published benchmarks for these processors, at
their given speeds from the manufacturer's web sites. We provide
a range of Mhz results so that you can speculate about what
the iMac vs E-Machine match-up, hypothetically, might look
like in the early fall, when the Mhz ratings for both machines
might be different than they are today.
In the end, whereas the iMac was conceived
and developed with a sense of craftmanship and artistry, the
E-Power's sole purpose is to make a quick buck with the minimal
amount of effort. To this end our guess is that Future Power
will use cheap plastics, have a cheesy monitor and lack the
attention to aesthetic detail, which is the hallmark of the
iMac. We have not seen the machine, but this would be in keeping
with most of the rest of the cheap PC clone industry which,
in aesthetics and quality, strives hard not to rise above
the clunky, pre-glasnost feeling, operating system that runs
on their machines.
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