We saw photos last month, we saw a brief user video earlier this week, and now Engadget has posted a full hands-on report showing Psystar's Mac clone in action. The so-called Open Computer is indeed a reality, but how does it compare to actual Macs from Apple?
According to Engadget, Psystar's product has "some definite rough patches and issues, all mostly having to do with the fact that OS X isn't really built for this hardware." Namely, the pre-installed version of Mac OS X 10.5 isn't Apple's latest build, at least one of the machine's fans runs at full blast all the time, the network controller's DHCP lease "drops every fifteen minutes or so," and the Apple System Profiler tool doesn't report information on graphics, memory, and audio hardware.
Still, the Open Computer works (mostly) as advertised, and Engadget ran benchmarks showing it's almost competitive with a 2.4GHz iMac. In a video that accompanies the hands-on report, Engadget editor Nilay Patel says the Open Computer works just like a Mac "except for the brutal fan noise."
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