G4 Cube

Apple is known for creating works of art. The machines they put together are a revolution in style and presence. But users do need to sacrifice on something when buying these pieces of art. When Apple introduced the iMac, users had to give up the floppy drive totally. Fortunately, that kicked off the USB revolution. Similar is the case with the Cube too. The Cube looks like no other computer before it. In fact, it doesn’t look like a computer at all. So, if you prefer a unique, classy look and ease of setup and are willing to pay a premium for it the Power Mac G4 Cube is for you. It comes with a G4 450 MHz processor, 64 MB SDRAM, and a 2x AGP ATI Rage 128 graphics card. The Cube also has a built-in 56 kbps modem and a 10/100 Mbps LAN. Apart from these regulars, it has two Firewire ports for connecting high-bandwidth devices like video cameras.

The sleek, stylish 8" Cube with accessories to match is a sight on your desktop. The machine itself, encased in a transparent Lucite case, seems to float in water. An interesting feature is its silent operation. This is possible because it doesn’t have any cooling fan for the processor or the chassis. It relies on convectional cooling made possible by a duct that runs in the center of the Cube. The slot loading DVD drive and the 20 GB 5,400 rpm (surprising, given that most hard disk manufacturers have moved to 7,200 rpm) hard disk fit in nicely.

Complementing the Cube are the little globe-like transparent speakers that pack a lot of oomph for their size. The Cube comes with an optical mouse, which doesn’t have the traditional click-buttons on the upper side. The complete mouse-top clicks on its base. The mouse is larger and easier to handle than the iMac’s round mouse. The keyboard has the same transparent casing and is a standard USB keyboard, with special keys for volume control and ejecting a CD or

DVD.

However, Apple has done away with the power button on the keyboard.

The Cube doesn’t ship with a monitor and what’s recommended is the Cinema Display 17" flat-panel monitor.

One reason why the Cube could be made so compact is the way power supply has been handled. Power supply is external to the Cube and is perhaps the heaviest of all the add-ons accompanying it. Power to the monitor comes from the Cube and is through a special display connector, called the all-in-one Apple Display Connector. This carries the video signal, USB, and power through one cable. So, no separate power cable run into the monitor and you get two additional USB ports in the monitor too. There’s also a regular VGA-out connector, if you want to connect a standard monitor.

When setting up the Cube, you may want to hide the power supply, as it looks ugly in comparison to the rest of the machine.

If you need to find the Reset and Cold boot power switches, you have to look really hard. They are tiny little ‘dots’ underneath the Cube, right next to the monitor port.

One nice feature is the touch-sensitive power switch on the top of the Cube, which puts it to sleep and wakes it up. Almost everyone who came near the machine while it was with us was eternally fascinated by this switch. And many of them managed to start off the sleep process unknowingly, just because they couldn’t help running their hands over its contours. Luckily, the machine asks for confirmation before being put to sleep.

For those who like to open up their machines and look at the innards, doing it with the Cube would be a breeze. Unplug the power and other cables, turn it upside down, press the handle and pull out the machine. You can see the RAM slots, the ATI Rage 128 card and the Airport slot. Sorry, you won’t find any PCI slots. There’s no space for them in this compact case. All the Cube’s ports are underneath it. So you need to tip over the machine to plug in all the cables. Take care, however, that the machine is not running, or you might just overheat it. One shortcoming is the length of cables for the keyboard and speakers. The speaker cables are hardly long enough to give you good stereo separation unless you keep the speakers well behind the monitor plane.

There aren’t many Macintosh benchmarks around. After all, only one company makes these machines. Available benchmarks comprise Speed Mark from MacWorld and MacBench from Ziff Davis. We checked out the performance of the Cube using MacBench 5. This benchmark checks out the various sub-systems like the processor, video, hard disk and the CD/ DVD drive. Apart from these, it also measures the graphics playback of the machine in actual applications. It takes a G3/300 MHz as the reference, with a score of 1000. We tried running all sorts of applications, ranging from simple productivity applications to graphics intensive ones. Graphics performance was good, and the flat, sharp Cinema Display was a pleasure. The machine comes pre-loaded with 64 MB RAM, but you can put in more. The Cube uses Standard PC RAM, and we would recommend that you opt for extra RAM. We tried out many applications with extra RAM and found a perceptible difference.

That brings us to the price tag. The G4 Cube is priced at Rs 124,890. And you have to add another Rs 35,000 for the 17" Cinema Display monitor. That brings the price to Rs 159,890, a bit hefty a price tag even for the killer looks. The total package at

Rs 125,000 with 128 MB RAM would have made it a good deal, particularly for the style conscious.

Ashish Sharma at PCQ Labs