[John H]

I originally thought the large fan was intentionally big so it could spin slower and move the same amount of air as a smaller but faster/noisier fan. It seems that from previous models that it's a pointless feature and they should have just stuck to the same cooling arrangement as the QS models.

Surely even a fully loaded G4 with 4 PCI cards, 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives and RAM in every slot wouldn't need to dispense the kind of heat that would need such over the top cooling. I also beleive the 2 fans on the powersupply are of a cheap and very noisy type that could have been replaced with more efficient versions that don't make as much noise.

I'm in no position to buy a new mac or even a used one right now but I know I'd rather have a used 533Mhz, 800Mhz or 1Ghz dual G4 than one of the new DDR models just for the quieter operation and lack of compatability issues.

Apple have made a very large and very public mistake with the whole design of the new powermacs and it wouldn't surprise me if they're no more than a stop gap to something that genuinely needs that level of cooling. I just hope they do something about it in future models because I'm going to be staying beige for a while yet and I'd hate to have to buy a QS G4 and then have something with that IBM PPC chip come out soon after.