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WHAT'S HOT: Apple's high-end version of its new IMac is a little white hemisphere with a 17-inch widescreen LCD on a stalk poking out of the top. The 1440 by 900 display can swivel, and its chrome steel stalk folds on hinges in two places and is articulated so you can raise its top edge 20 inches above your desk or lower it to kneel at your keyboard and still tilt the screen to any angle. The screen displays bright, saturated colors and good detail, and text looks clean and crisp as well. Apple stocks the IMac with its own software, including Imovie--an editing program that makes it simple to import video over a FireWire port, arrange your clips on a time line, add titles and transitions, sync up a soundtrack, and save your production onto a DVD using its built-in DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive. Apple includes a copy of the AppleWorks productivity suite, and the Mac's OS X 10.2 operating system has plenty of useful features; for example, its Unix foundation includes the Grep text-search engine, and you can use built-in speech recognition to run the computer (though not to convert speech to text).

WHAT'S NOT: Apple set this IMac's price at an approachable $1999, but shorted it on some desirable basics. The spherical speakers, which have a proprietary connection to the IMac, sounded tinny and distorted audio at low volume. At this price, you get only 256MB of memory and a single empty memory slot. And while this model's 32MB NVidia GeForce4 MX graphics controller is more powerful than the GeForce2 MX controller used in the 15-inch flat-panel models, our test system dropped a lot of detail and color when playing DVDs. The IMac design is essentially closed--you can't change the display, or add any cards (except an 802.11b wireless networking card called the AirPort card) or internal drives. If you want a floppy drive, you have to buy an external USB unit. Finally, Apple offers stingy support: one year of warranty coverage and only 90 days of tech support.

WHAT ELSE: Because PC WorldBench 4 doesn't run on the Mac platform, we couldn't put the IMac through performance tests. In general use, however, the 800-MHz Power PC G4 model felt plenty fast on productivity apps but bogged down on DVDs and games.

UPSHOT: The IMac is fun to use and offers a fairly complete hardware and software package, though its closed design means you won't be able to upgrade it internally. With its limited graphics controller, this isn't a killer entertainment machine.

SUMMARY

Apple IMac 800-MHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256MB of SDRAM, Apple OS 10.2, 80GB hard drive, DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive, NVidia GEForce4MX 420 graphics card with 32MB of SDRAM, 17-inch LCD monitor, Apple speakers, network adapter, V.90 modem, all-in-one case; IMovie, Imusic, ITunes, Quicken 2002. One-year warranty on parts and labor, 12-hour daily toll-free tech support. $1999 800/692-7753 www.apple.com