$2,500 can buy power in a PC

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For several years in the personal computer business, it seemed as if $2,500 or so was the "sweet spot" in pricing.

Ante up that kind of moolah, the thinking went, and you were sure to get one of the more powerful computers around, one that wouldn't go stale before you got it home from the store.

On the Windows side, prices are much lower.

You can spend about $1,500 to get a spiffy desktop PC; even $800 will buy a system that's more than enough for most users' needs, we're told.

You can even get a decent notebook PC for that same $1,500, if not less.

So is it absurd to spend $2,500 on a desktop computer?

Well, that depends on who you are and what you want to do. If, like me, you are an Apple Macintosh fan, the $2,500 invested in a dual-processor Power Mac G5, with the CPU chips running at 1.8 GHz is not a totally bad idea.

The Power PC G5 chip, introduced to much fanfare last year, is a 64-bit processor and delivers what Apple calls "an exponential increase" in the machine's computing power.

The 64-bit PowerPC G5 processor architecture lets the Power Mac G5 handle more tasks more quickly, as well as support up to 8GB of main memory -- four times more than a typical PC. As I've often said before, the more RAM, the better.

My test unit of the Power Mac G5 boasts a little less than 8GB of RAM, but it certainly has enough to handle my daily needs.