First of all, we'd just like to take this opportunity to apologize in advance for any typos that may make it into today's episode, but your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff is operating at a severe disadvantage right now: we've been struck blind. Now, before anyone starts freaking out, we should make it clear that we believe this is entirely a temporary condition, and we expect we'll be back to our old sighted selves real soon now. What happened was this: we stumbled across the announcement of Compaq's new low-cost, "legacy-free" computer and when we saw its name, our eyes rolled so far back in our heads that they stuck there. So until the sheer "oh, brother" effect wears off, we're stuck sitting here staring at our own frontal lobes. All because Compaq named their new computer the iPaq. (We're not kidding-- and hopefully we haven't just temporarily blinded half of our viewing audience.)

Now, the thing about the iPaq is that it's not really an iMac clone. For one thing, it's not an all-in-one unit; it's a little PC with a standard VGA port so you can plug in a monitor. For another thing, it's neither brightly-colored nor translucent-- it's silver and charcoal-grey. And perhaps most importantly, it's targeted at the business market, not at consumers. That said, the iPaq shares certain design features with the computer after which it was obviously named. It's got many of the same "drawbacks" of the iMac that the PC crowd denigrated so roundly (no expansion slots, no SCSI, no serial/parallel ports other than USB), only now those drawbacks are lumped into a single great "feature" which Compaq calls "Legacy-Free." Plus, the iPaq is marketed as a low-cost Internet device just like its more colorful precursor.

The thing is, we have to admit, the iPaq looks like a pretty nice option for large businesses who just want cheap Windows systems to throw on the desks for Internet access and basic office productivity. We especially like the removable media bay feature. But did they really have to call it the "iPaq" and strike us blind? We can't be the only ones who suffered from this affliction-- we're sure there are plenty of other Mac fans out there who experienced the same phenomenon. Class action lawsuit, anyone? And while we're at it, maybe we should file suit against Gateway for the design of their all-in-one Astro; it's not an iMac copycat per se, so Apple can't go after them on trade dress grounds, and it didn't really make us roll our eyes to a dangerous degree, but the thing is so freaking ugly that we were smitten with a bout of hysterical blindness by the sheer sight of it. Eeeewwww.