Apple Power Macintosh G4 (M7892LL/A) Mac Desktop

This machine is still a contender going into 2005. I makes many new Pentium 4 PCs look like slow pokes with its Reduced Instruction processors and independent vector processing are a great buy. They can be had for around $600 and offer truly upgradeable performance. They can be brought into the blindingly fast 1.5 gigahertz vector processing. When you couple this power with Macs latest OS X Panther, you have a computer that goes from dead to desktop in about half a minute, compared to two minutes for many Pentiums starting up with XP SP2.

Take this Mac G4 and give it a simple processor upgrade (times 2), add some RAM, an internal DVD burner, and you've got yourself a computer that rivals brand new Power Macs (except the G5> Mine is running happily and has been 24/7 for 3 years!