iorek

Model

• Apple eMac (ATI Graphics)
  

Introduced

• 2003

CPU

• PowerPC 7445 (G4), 1.0 GHz

RAM

• 768 MB

Video

• ATI Radeon 7500 (AGP 4x)

Disk

• 80 GB harddrive
  
• 4x SuperDrive

Network

• Wireless (AirPort Extreme)
• 10/100BASE-T
  

Operating Systems

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther)

Features

• 17-inch flat CRT
• Two Firewire 400 ports
• 18-watt stereo speakers
• Microphone
• Modem

I did some work for a friend and as partial payment I took iorek home. As a coincidence, I had spent the previous weekend tweaking Ubuntu on stinky to look like OS X, but it just didn't work smoothly. A week later I had the real thing.

I bought a refurbished AirPort Extreme card from Apple as well. Donnie tried to install it but it was difficult to tell when it was fully inserted. After I tried a few times, it finally worked (thankfully without damaging anything in the process).

I've never had so much fun setting up a computer; this Mac is an absolute pleasure to use. The kids can control it by talking to it ("Computer, open World of Warcraft"). It even tells (really bad) knock-knock jokes if you ask it to. It comes with iTunes which works with the Rio S10 MP3 player I handed down to Donnie Darko last summer, and it comes with iPhoto which lets him play with the photos on his hand-me-down Fuji FinePix A101. iPhoto also works with the Vtech KidiZoom camera Calvin got for Christmas. It also comes with iMovie that the kids can use to create and mix movies from their animations, the webcam, and our camcorder (though because it's an old analog camcorder they'll have to transfer video through the MythTV system). When they're all done, they can turn their movie into a standard DVD (with menus and everything) using iDVD. It's just amazing what you can do with a Mac straight out of the box.