Oops! Apple releases G5 specs 4 days early

[Cali]

Which Mac are you running? Unless you bought it within the past few months, it should have come equipped with Classic 9.

It came with Classic 9 but according to Jim Dye that's different from OS 9. I can boot up in Classic but it's not the same thing, I've been told.

[Jim Dye]

If you are running Classic, you are running OS X. Classic runs on top of OS X.

Do you have an OS 9 system disc? If so, try putting it in you CD-ROM drive. Then reboot the computer while holding down the 'C' key. Continue to hold down the 'C' key until you see a splash screen announcing OS 9. If you can't get to this point, then your Mac is most likely not OS 9 bootable.

Let us know if you need any more help!

[Jim Dye]

These articles explain it better than I do. B)

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106719

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106966

[J Larsen]

re: professional customers upgrading computers

aren't there some nice tax loopholes for this?

I wouldn't know. Being an NSF fellow, tax dollars have paid for all the research-grade computers I've used.

[Cali]

Thanks Jim!

[Christiern]

Benchmark sparring: Intel's reaction to the G5

Apple's public designation of the Power Macintosh G5 as the "world's fastest personal computer" accompanied by a set of stellar benchmarks for the new machines, seems to have evoked the investigative spirit in a number of interested parties. Among them - the full gamut of major processor manufacturers including Intel, AMD and Motorola; media outlets of all sizes; and most importantly, those with actual access to the still publicly unavailable machines.

We contacted Intel to find out what they thought of Apple's benchmarks, and the industry's reaction. Naturally, the company had no official comments of the own at the time, noting that they had no G5 machines to test, and were merely reading through the crossfire with the rest of us.

They later referred us to an analyst with the Gartner Group, Martin Reynolds, who we naturally expected would be highly skeptical of Apple's claims and present some Intel backing. Hours later, a Gartner report written by Reynolds was issued, containing this statement:

"These models certainly equal Intel's advanced 875 platform and should allow Apple to go until 2005 without a major platform refresh."

The "875" platform to which Reynolds refers, is the chipset backing Intel's current line of top-end Pentium 4 offerings. It sports an 800 MHz frontside bus - compared to the G5's 1 GHz - with support for dual-channel DDR400 RAM.

It is unclear to us whether this means Intel is admitting Apple may have a superior platform -- at least for now.