Well, it's clear that eMachines made the "right" move. Future Power made a significant tactical error by pre-announcing their own "ePower" Wintel iMac rip-off months before the system would actually ship, giving Apple plenty of time to file a lawsuit citing intellectual property violations. By the time the ePower is ready for prime time, we're guessing that Apple will have little difficulty securing a preliminary injunction preventing the sale of the system until the lawsuit is resolved. eMachines, however, went a different route, launching a surprise introduction via Circuit City stores last weekend. Their "eOne" is on the shelves and available for purchase right now-- and so far Apple still hasn't sued.

Now, since the eOne actually exists, that means it can also be reviewed, and Retail Week has done just that. Guess what? They practically gush about it, calling this knock-off a "knockout." And lest you think that the reviewer's opinion is purely a Windows-centric one (the detailed review doesn't even mention the eOne's obvious "borrowing" from the iMac playbook until the penultimate paragraph), Mac users are reluctantly impressed, as well-- at least, judging by the mail in our inbox and some of the reactions posted at MacInTouch. So far there isn't enough data to know whether or not the eOne will really sell, but with reviews like Retail Week's, it's hard to imagine that the product won't be a success. We wonder, though, whether the eOne will steal potential iMac customers, or just people who would have bought cheap Compaq or HP systems anyway.

So what's to like about the eOne? Plenty, actually. We can't deny that there are features in the eOne we'd like to see in the iMac, like 64 MB of RAM, a $799 price tag, a second RJ-11 jack to allow the pass-through plug-in of a phone after connecting a line to the modem, two PC card slots for expansion capabilities, the built-in ability to capture video, a scrolling mouse, and even nice little touches like audio CD controls right on the unit itself, under the CD-ROM tray. While we're personally not tempted to buy any system that won't let us run the Mac OS, there are plenty of consumers out there who probably feel otherwise. Here's hoping that the new iMac arrives soon, and that it provides compelling reasons for the Average Schmoe™ to buy one instead of an eOne. Is Apple ready for the competition?