Apple Adds $800 iMac to Lineup -- The iMac product grid at Apple's online store gained a new low-cost configuration this week. The new $800 iMac is available only in Indigo, and features a 500 MHz PowerPC G3 processor, 64 MB of RAM (as opposed to 128 MB in the next model up), a 20 GB hard disk, and a CD-ROM drive (as opposed to the CD-RW drives that are otherwise standard across the line), plus the standard complement of ports on other iMac models. This model also includes 512K of Level 2 cache, twice that of the other models, but running at a slower 200 MHz. Although the machine comes with Mac OS X installed (but not activated), the small amount of built-in memory makes it practically impossible to run. Fortunately, RAM is incredibly cheap right now (unless you buy it from the Apple Store, which charges up to five times the cost of RAM compared to many memory dealers; check sites like dealram and ramseeker for details). When Apple introduced the latest iMac lineup (see "Apple Speeds Up iMacs and Power Mac G4s" in TidBITS-589), we were disappointed that the lowest-cost model had jumped to $1,000 - it's nice to see an option again for folks with tighter budgets. [JLC]

<http://www.apple.com/imac/>
<http://store.apple.com/>
<http://dealram.com/>
<http://www.ramseeker.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06501>