When I was shopping for a new Macintosh back in April, I had originally planned to buy two computers - one for me, and one for my fiancee.

She told me, no, she'd use my old Power Mac 8600/300, and I should get the existing absolute top-of-the-line so I wouldn't have to buy another machine for a while.

So, I ended up buying the Power Macintosh Dual G4/1GHz. She's got my old machine, but since I made the mistake of letting her use the new one a few times, she says the 8600 is "way too slow!"

The Quicksilver, as Apple calls it on their tech support website, has since been discontinued in favor of a new line of dual-processor Macintoshes, but those only came out last week (August, 2002).

The computer itself is in the same style of housing that Apple has been using for the last two years - a mini-tower with a side that drops completely down exposing the PCI slots and motherboard in such a fashion that it's incredibly easy to add another interface card or more memory.

Of course, with 512MB of RAM standard, and an 80GB HD, most people aren't going to be adding any RAM or HD space very soon after buying it.

The GeForce 4MX was "standard" for this particular model, but a GeForce 4Ti was a "build-to-order" option on it.

The case has one drawback, though - the speaker in the bottom front of the case is exposed to poking fingers. I've seen several of these machines with dimples and creases in the silver plastic of the speaker where poking fingers have dented them. A third-party company is now manufacturing speaker grilles that fit into the hole, but it isn't really a good thing to have a totally open 2" hole where the speaker is.

The other problem I have with the Quicksilver G4 is that there's no audio input jack. The latest Apple Dual G4 machines have microphone jacks, but the Quicksilver does not. So, if I want to record audio, I'm going to need to buy a microphone-to-USB adapter, or rely on a FireWire-equipped camcorder to convert the analog signal to digital.

How fast is the Quicksilver? Scary fast. Wicked scary fast. I have a Pentium III/700MHz to compare it with, and I used the Distributed Computing RC5-64 "keycrack" program to benchmark the machines in a side-by-side comparison.

The Pentium III/700 scores 1.93Mkeys/sec with no other applications running.

The Apple Power Macintosh Dual G4/1GHz scores an average of 19.41Mkeys/sec. And it rips CDs to MP3 while getting a slightly lower score (18.58 Mkeys/sec!).

Apple's later generations of the Dual G4 include an audio input jack, so that's no longer an issue. Also, Mac OS X version 10.2 is even more "dual-processor aware," and makes functions even faster on the DP machines.

Over the last two years, as OS X has evolved, Apple has made leaps and bounds to provide a better computing experience for their customers.

And they're worth every penny.

Immediately after purchasing the Quicksilver, I noted that the screen would flash at random intervals. This didn't render the machine unusable, but it was very annoying. I called Apple, and they said that a batch of machines had gotten out with bad video cards. They sent someone out to my house with a new video card, but it wasn't the same high-end GeForce 4MX that the machine came with. They told me that they'd be replacing it again with a new video card of the same caliber once the manufacturer sent them a new batch, but in the interim, the "downgraded" card stopped the flashing.

Three weeks later, they called back and asked if they could send someone out again to put a new high-end card in the machine to replace the temporary card.

Now, the machine is working fine. No flashes. And Apple made two house calls to make that happen. That's good customer service.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 2799
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: SuperDisk
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50