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Apple's Power Mac G4 Cube is such a bold, ultramodern design statement that a cynic might assume that this new Macintosh is all beauty and no brains. Not quite. Sure, its compact, steel-and-clear-plastic body, high-style cooling vents, and top-mounted DVD-ROM slot make it look like the Jetsons' toaster, or maybe their facial-tissue box. But the Cube also packs some features that are so sensible, you may wonder why other PCs haven't had them over the years. However, its relatively high price ($1799, no monitor included) and minimal internal space for upgrades mean it's not a system that's guaranteed to thrill Mac partisans, let alone Windows types.

Once you get past the novelty of its shape, the Cube is actually rather unobtrusive--not just because it takes up so little space (the footprint is 7.7 by 7.7 inches) but also because it's silent in operation, except for the sound of the hard drive spinning. (By comparison, my PC roars like a blast furnace.) Apple hushed the Cube with a cooling system, those aforementioned air vents, and an external power supply, which you can tuck under your desk.

Inside the case, the standard configuration gives you a 450-MHz PowerPC G4 processor, 64MB of RAM, a 20GB hard drive, a DVD-ROM drive, and an ethernet adapter. The system's performance seemed adequate (unfortunately, PC WorldBench 2000 doesn't run on Macs), but the standard RAM allotment seemed tight when the system ran more than one application.

So bumping the Cube up to at least 128MB of RAM (it supports up to 1.5GB) is a good idea. And fortunately, adding the appropriate chips is a snap: The system's innards pop out with a single tug on a spring-loaded handle. The machine is also remarkably free of cable clutter, because both the speakers and the display draw power from the system through slim all-in-one cords. The single-cord monitor connection, which combines video, power, and Universal Serial Bus signals, requires one of Apple's classy new displays, which are styled to match the different G4 cases. Options include a $499 17-inch CRT (16-inch diagonal viewable screen), a $999 15-inch LCD, or an awe-inspiring, $3999 22-inch LCD. If you'd rather use your current monitor, you can use the graphics board's standard 15-pin connector.

Even the Cube's transparent mouse is a cut above its typical PC counterpart: It's an optical model that has no ball and buttons--you just press the mouse itself down to click. The baseball-size Harman/Kardon speakers, also encased in transparent plastic, perform very well, especially given their small size.