Now that we've mostly physically recovered from the mild stroke brought on by Apple's most recent earnings warning, we're looking for ways to help us get back on our feet mentally and emotionally. Aromatherapy seemed to be helping at first, but the scents of peppermint and orange blossoms kept getting overpowered by the stale odor of Apple's bitter defeat. But that's alright; faithful viewer Josh forwarded us an article in The Register about Xtrem, and in doing so has proved that laughter really is the best medicine (provided you're not suffering from massive arterial bleeding, or anything like that).

You remember Xtrem, right? These are the guys whose stated business plan is to buy official Apple Power Mac G4 systems, butcher them for parts, wave a magic wand, and then assemble and sell microphone-looking XtremMac 1200 systems which allegedly run standard Motorola G4 processors overclocked to the decidedly un-Motorola-like clock speed of 1.2 GHz. Well, while the Swedish company isn't quite going to make their original end-of-the-year ship date, representatives have told The Register that the XtremMac will indeed surface before the end of January, for a price of $2000. So if Steve takes the wraps off a dual-processor 600 MHz G4 system and you just can't muster the excitement to buy one, just wait another three weeks and you'll be able to get an XtremMac for probably about half the price.

By the way, don't forget-- in addition to a magical 1200 MHz G4 and a really stupid looking enclosure, that $2000 will also buy you "a 320 MBps SCSI RAID controller; DVD or DVD-RAM; CD or CD-R; Zip, Jaz, or Orb removable storage; and ATI Rage Pro 128 or Radeon, 3dfx Voodoo 5, or Nvidia GeForce 2MX graphics." Why buy from Apple, when Xtrem can give you so much more for so much less? (Ignore that small print about how the "final specification and optional extras are subject to change," okay?)

Laugh? We thought we'd die. But we thank Xtrem for cheering us up in such a depressing time, and as always, we'll gladly recant every derisive thing we've ever said about the company if it actually ships its mythical Mac. But you'll all forgive us when we say that finding out that the $60 MacThrust accelerator kit consists of a set of jumper blocks didn't exactly inspire confidence in Xtrem's ability to overclock a processor to more than twice its rated speed...