Oh the irony… Psystar’s Open Mac clones now being cloned?
In a strange turn of events, it would seem as though the rip-offER has become the rip-offEE.
Just minutes after the report that Psystar has finally gotten its online store back open and is ready to start shipping out that Open Macs, oh, excuse me, Open Computers, faithful Macenstein reader Mathew lets us know that Psystar now has some competition (well, in France, at least).
A .Mac site is currently offering a computer they are calling the Open Mac Pro to French residents, and if you thought Psystar’s Open Mac operation looked shady, wait ’till you see this site.
First of all, this .Mac page (red flag #1) offers to take orders via e-mail and phone, but there is no company name anywhere to be found. So far, there have been a whopping 12 visitors to the site (sites with page counters are never a god sign). The Open Mac Pro (seems like the French are not scared of using the “Mac” name, unlike those wusses over at Psystar) offers users a Core2Quad 6600, that Nvidia 8800gt graphics card we’ve all been hearing about, 320 GB hard drive, 6GB Ram, and of course, Leopard (preinstalled), all for 799 Euros ($1,263.419). It would seem there is an option to swap out the 8800gt for an Nvidia 8600GT, although it is not stated, they just sort of threw a picture up of one…
Of course, if money is an issue, you can always opt for the original Open Mac, which seems quite similar to Psystar’s offering, including the same case (red flag #32). The Open Mac comes standard with a Core2Duo e6320, an Nvidia 8800gt graphics card, 320 GB hard drive, 2GB Ram, and Leopard (preinstalled), for just 699 Euros ($1,105.294).
Call us crazy, but this “company”, if you want to call it that, has got our Spider Senses tingling. If any of our faithful French Mac readers want to give that number a call and see what they find, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks.
Just thought you might like to now, those are the exact some cases Psystar was using to make their models as well, I believe they may be the same specs as well, hell probably the same company.
PS the case they are using for the pro model is using is a pretty standard Antec P182SE, I’d recognize it anywhere, for one I used to sell them and 2 I also built my friend as PC in that case.
funny….
If you reload the page, the counter add’s a number…. See if i can get it up to a thousand…
You would think that once Apple realizes the site AND the email for buying one is in their domain, they would just shut them down.
Maybe its because its the weekend, or maybe its an Apple employee trying to be funny.
Looks like you didn’t read the site close enough. the Open Mac comes with a 8600gt and the Open mac Pro comes with a 8800 gt card. it even says 8600gt for the open mac in your screen shot.
an Apple employee would be fired for that
hum… it’s a mobile phone number…
Probably the same company. psystar will probably have much greater success in the EU where everything costs more than here in the states and people are less inclined to pay more for something just to be considered “cool” at the local coffee shop.