Here is our full unboxing and benchmarking of the Psystar OpenPC that just arrived today. For about $550 you get a fully working Leopard Desktop, albeit without System Update right now, without having to visit the Apple Store. How long can this paradise last? I don’t know, but it works and is actually fairly fast. Here’s our long unboxing and bencmarking using GeekBench. It’s a little long, but if you’re outfitting an office with Macs, you might want to give these guys a look.
Oh wow….
Apple won’t be happy about this!
No thanks, I’d rather buy a mac mini.
Why are people taking this seriously? Anyone could build this with parts from newegg.
#3 raises a good point. This is a publicity stunt.
Apparently the fan runs at max 24/7, too.
“It’s a little long, but if you’re outfitting an office with Macs, you might want to give these guys a look.”
Riiiiggghhht. I’ll be sure to make sure my business is run on machines build by a company that is three days old and has no proven track record for quality and/or support.
LOL, build an office with macs.. that’s rich.
@Mike (comment #2): So you’d rather get the same thing, but pay a lot more for it?! Sounds like the logic of a scared Apple employee trolling..
@Ryan Robinson: Your typical mac user is someone who has no clue how to build a computer.. that’s why they chose the mac in the first place. So for that group it’s great to get the same product for a lot less.
@Nick: Valid point.
Does this even have networking? Drivers are already a pain with pcs, imagine with this hack job.
@Ryan: it’s called business opportunity.
Commodity hardware plus Leopard? Pretty straight-forward. I’m pretty sure I could beat Apple on price and make a profit at the same time.
Maybe these guys won’t succeed, but the opportunity is there, staring people in the face.
without the ability to run SoftwareUpdate, I’m not sure I’d want this in an office situation, home sure, office no. Lack of security updates would be a major concern at my job
It’s just not worth the opportunity costs of warranty issues, update issues, etc. Although parts availability is a perk.
We have had such a good run with iMacs slowly replacing all of our PC commodity hardware (except for our video editing, ediu 3.6 on XP is superior to Final Cut), that we have not had a single failure from these Apples running 24-7-365, we never shut them down, they have never crashed, they just work.
Pystar? Nah.
whatever it looks like, we’ll still laser customize it
. apple needs competition to keep them honest.
I wonder what is quicker…..the operating system or apple legal.
These guys are should be prepared to lose a fortune in court.
Love it!
I sure hope we’re treated to the spectacle of Apple being dragged kicking and screaming out of its socialist paradise. Apple shareholders will actually benefit, with OS X taking up much more market share.
Neat. But the Radius, StarMax, DayStar, PowerComputing and Umax, etc… all of them fell didn’t they?
The “without System Update” part sort of gives me the creeps. It could be the a taste of not very nice things to come.
@ Ryan Robinson
You said, “Anyone could build this with parts from newegg.”
I’m betting you haven’t done it. Building a Hackintosh (a PC running Leopard) is no simple feat. Even someone who has built many PCs will invest a significant amount of time and effort to build their first PC running a Mac OS. OpenPC claims to have some proprietary parts that facilitate the process. For someone that wants a PC running Leopard, this appears to be a good deal.
@Richard – you said “These guys are should be prepared to lose a fortune in court.”
Do you know what sets OpenPC apart? OpenPC sells the hardware. The user technically buys the OS separately. The OpenPC folks are simply installing your OS on their hardware. Unlike the prior Mac clone companies, Apple doesn’t have as much legal ammo to fire at these guys. (However, they are a small company and they might cave quickly, but that’s a different story.)
Compaq started the same way.
@Dave “OpenPC claims to have some proprietary parts that facilitate the process.”
Which proprietary parts? The EFI V8 emulator they stole from x86project?
http://www.regh...ams_mac_cloner/