emac

[carvell]

I'm looking into getting mBox. I know that 6.4 is not tested on emac, but does anyone have real experience with this? It would seem that the eMac has everything required for proper operation, 1.25 processer, 160G ATA drive, 1G SDRAM DDR-133, etc. all for like $1000 cheaper. Am I missing something obvious here?

[marty martin]

We have 34 of them with MBoxes in our college and they're great, absolutely no problems at all with ProTools 6.4, one thing that might be a problem though, is the noise from the internal fan but for the price there is nothing to touch it.

[headwerk'n]

The only real limitation of the eMac these days is that you're stuck with the 1280x960 17" monitor... you can't connect a second one to extend your desktop (only mirror it - ie. presentations).

There IS a firmware hack that does allow the mini VGA port to extend the desktop, BUT not only can the hack kill the computer, the system's graphics card was only designed to drive one monitor, and as such, video performance isn't terribly good with two displays running.

The other thing to consider is that the eMac's internal drive is only 5,400rpm, so it's not exactly a swift read/write performer. But of course, you'll have your audio on a fast external firewire drive (won't you?) so it's not so much an issue.

Give your eMac at least a 1GB of RAM and you'll be a happy camper.

[RadioMoo]

the eMac's internal drive is only 5,400rpm

The 1.25 eMac's drive is 7200rpm.