Meanwhile, the Mac that Apple specifically designed for the education market (that there eMac) is proving to be the absolute worst example of quality assurance and workmanship the company could have chosen to parade in front of school buyers. We haven't heard much first-hand from people bitten by the "raster shift" problem described over at MacFixIt-- in which the bottom third of the display is black, the Dock appears just above the blackness, and the top third of the Desktop would be hovering several inches above the unit-- but if it's truly as epidemic as it sounds, there's a large contingent of eMac owners sitting around staring at a screen that looks like it's jumped a third of the way through the top of the CRT as if to escape.

Now, the problem itself is actually kinda cute, and lends itself to all kinds of little jokes about how Mac OS X is just trying to distance itself from the eMac's cheap motherboard or whatever, but unfortunately this problem is reportedly so widespread, it's almost something to panic about. Reports of the rate of failure vary, but some resellers are claiming to see a between 15% and 60% eMac return rate, mostly due to video failure like the raster shift issue. 60%?! Sweet jumping cats with bells on! That drives through Unacceptable, goes straight on past Utterly Shocking, and checks into the Oh My God Inn in Completely Unbelievable, Arizona. If the reports weren't so widespread, we'd never believe a word of it; seriously, when was the last time you heard of even a crappy El Cheapo Wintel manufacturer with a product failure rate anywhere near that high?

On the plus side, though, with the Jingle Bells and Whistles promotion, you can now pick up an eMac for the low, low price of just $999 after rebate. That's an excellent deal for a complete G4-based system, and really, just how much do you use the top third of your screen anyway? Oh, sure, it's got the menu bar in it, but does that really make it so gosh-darned important? After all, that's what command key equivalents are for. We figure, heck, as long as you can play with that cool magnification feature in the Dock, that's pretty much the only reason anybody really buys a Mac, right? So, enjoy.