Faithful viewer Jack (presumably some other non-AtAT-affiliated Jack, or else we're in serious trouble) wrote in wanting to know "where all the G5 rumors got to." Well, Jack, while we'd suggest that anyone who honestly expected Apple to unveil Power Mac G5s running at 2.4 GHz last Monday should maybe look into getting their skepticism tanks refilled, semi-credible G5 rumors are still alive and well. Personally, based largely on the fact that Motorola's constant job cuts implies that the entire company now consists of about twelve employees (at least four of whom were formerly janitorial staff and not well-versed in the finer points of semiconductor design), we're not really expecting G5s until maybe this summer at the earliest. Assuming Motorola can keep its book of pink slips sheathed for a while, that is.

But that's just us being our usual skeptical selves, and we'd be remiss to mention that lots of people are expecting Power Mac G5 systems much, much sooner than that. In fact, plenty of Mac fans are breathlessly awaiting what they consider to be a dead certain G5 unveiling next month at Seybold on the 19th, or maybe at the Macworld Expo in Tokyo on March 21st at the latest. Those who choose to expect G5s sooner rather than later have all manner of rumorlicious tidbits at their disposal to fan the flames of their optimism-- there was, for example, the way that the G5 was mentioned multiple times in the web pages of a shareware scanner application called VueScan last month.

However, if you need evidence a little more "established" than a mention by a shareware author to plunge you headlong into giddy hopes of imminent G5itude, you're in luck; faithful viewer The Mod Imposter found something a little stronger. It seems that the G5 just made an appearance on one of the web pages at the Epson Sweden site. Somebody took a screenshot just in case the page disappears; you might have to squint a little to see it, but if you focus, you'll be able to pick out the phrase "Apple G3/G4/G5/Cube" in what is apparently a compatibility statement for its new line of laser printers. Sure, it's in Swedish, but "G5" spells "speed" in any language, baby.

So there's the latest G5 sighting, and admittedly it's a little thin, but hey, Epson's a big-name manufacturer, so surely a mention of the G5 over there ought to count for something. While we've chosen to follow the path of least disappointment, please don't let us put a damper on your plans for chirpy optimism and ebullience; we just decided that it might be nice to be pleasantly surprised for a change.