Practical Mac: New educators' Mac is advanced, and at lower price

When Apple offered up its fancy LCD-based iMacs in January, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said the company had eschewed a mere refresh of the original all-in-one iMac design. The new iMacs instead combined several of the best pieces of Apple's technology into a single form factor.

Apple this week gave a glimpse into what might have been by announcing a new education-only computer called the eMac. Like the original iMac, the unit sports an all-in-one design featuring a cathode-ray tube, although the eMac's is a full 17 inches and 1280-by-960 pixels.

The eMac appears to be what the iMac's next step would have been if Jobs hadn't moved the iMac into the realm of science fiction. But educators couldn't justify spending the minimum $1,399 on the new iMacs, and Apple created a unit that's both cheaper (because of the CRT) and shallower, to fit better on school desks. Like all of Apple's newer computers, it's an opaque white.

The eMac is available only to educators, students and academic institutions through their usual contacts or the online Apple store (store.apple.com).

Apple has two models, both of which feature a 700-MHz G4 processor, 40-gigabyte hard drive and 128 megabytes of RAM. The basic eMac has a CD-ROM drive but no modem, which is rarely needed in a networked school. A second model includes the modem and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive for burning discs and playing DVDs. The models cost schools $999 and $1,199, respectively, as part of a multiunit purchase; educators and students pay $50 more for single machines.

Apple also refreshed its Titanium PowerBook line, enlarging the display to a remarkable 15.2 inches (1280-by-854 pixels), and increasing the processor speed to a maximum of 800 MHz and the system bus speed, which affects overall system performance, to 133 MHz. Options range from $2,499 to $3,799.

Quality time: I spent the last month with a midrange Apple iMac on my desk to see how well and how differently it acts from its pre-redesign version. My normal desktop is a G4 Cube (450 MHz) with a 17-inch LCD display. The iMac I tested uses a 700-MHz G4 chip and has the 15-inch LCD.

The month was notable more because of the lack of differentiation between these two computers than because of anything at which the iMac excels. Its form factor allowed me to place it at the edge of an overloaded desk without risk to it — the heavy base keeps it quite stable — while its keyboard and mouse remained usable.

Likewise, despite industry pundits asserting that no one ever adjusts a monitor, I found myself constantly tilting and tweaking the LCD display, which is attached to an articulated neck. Changes in lighting during the day and my posture necessitated small moves.

The iMac just about accommodates use while you're standing. Some ergonomists recommend a combination of sitting and standing over long stretches at a computer.

Remote control: As the eMac demonstrates, Apple spends a lot of time working with and listening to the education community. Macs still find themselves in their greatest concentration in schools and universities.

System administrators in academia loved a tool Apple released and supported for OS 9 that combined remote control of desktops, á la Timbuktu Pro (Practical Mac, Feb. 23), and remote installation of software, among other capabilities.

In April, Apple released a version of Apple Remote Desktop compatible with OS 8 through X.

Remote Desktop has the basics for remote control: simple file transfer and observation or control of a remote system.

Tom Goguen, director of Apple server software, said that in classrooms, a teacher running Remote Desktop can lock students' desktops and "immediately get the attention of all the students." The teacher can also share his own screen with each client Mac to demonstrate an action. A one-to-one text-chat feature lets a student and teacher interact without the graphical overhead.

In the corporate environment, Remote Desktop can be used for what are called "help desk" features, where a central group of technical-support wranglers can pull reports of hardware and software installed on a caller's machine, push a screen to the caller to demonstrate how to work through a problem, or take control to fix a problem.

With a single click, you can find out how much hard-disk storage is left on every machine, how much RAM is installed, or what system release has been put in place. For distributing software updates or company documents, the tool is also stellar: You can copy files to groups of machines all at once.

In more complicated environments, different administrators can be assigned different levels of privilege, letting some install software and others just offer remote advice by sharing their screens.

Remote Desktop works over local networks and the Internet, allowing centralized teaching or technical support that's not dependent on a local network. The software is sold in one of two bundles: a 10-client license for $299 or an unlimited license that supports up to 5,000 machines for $499. The controller software requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later; the client works with OS 8.1 through 9.2 and OS X 10.1.

Glenn Fleishman writes the Practical Mac column. Send questions to gfleishman@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes. com/columnists.