Speaking of occasions of thankfulness (and we were, too! Remember? Two scenes back? Never mind...), are you still flying high over Uncle Steve's promise that the G5 will hit 3 GHz by next summer? Well, you should be; after all we've been through with G4 clock speeds lagging Intel's by a factor of 2 and even 3, it's only natural to cling to an official corporate promise of a 3 GHz PowerPC in seven or eight months-- especially since Intel is still "only" in 3.2 GHz territory. Holy yikes, from a raw clock speed perspective, it's almost like we have a hope in Hades of catching up! Heavy on the "almost," though.

The completely-unsurprising-unless-you-went-off-your-meds-again reality of the situation, of course, is that Intel isn't just standing around eating homemade JELL-O Pudding Pops. According to a CNET article, the company's goal is for its upcoming "Prescott" chip (shipping any day now) to hit a full 4 GHz next year-- and at least one analyst cautions us not to "dismiss the possibility [Intel] could blow by that mark." So by the time Macs with 3 GHz processors hit the shelves, Wintels will more likely be available with a 33% higher clock speed. Boo, hiss.

It is worth noting, however, that right now Wintels are available at a clock speed 60% higher than that of the fastest Mac, and as of yet, no one's burst into flame because of it. Indeed, the only known case of Megahertz Envy-induced spontaneous combustion occurred at the height of the Motorolan lag three years ago, after Intel announced its 1.5 GHz Pentium while the G4 remained stuck at 500 MHz for its thirty-seventh year running. The way we see it (and most calculators would agree), a 33% disparity is far less offensive than a 60% one, and way less dangerous than the people-start-to-catch-fire level of 200%. In other words, the clock speed situation is improving-- which means, of course, that none of this is reason to panic, or even cause for worried harrumphing. Still, we suggest dressing sensibly, just to be on the safe side. Preferably light cottons and knits.

And then there's the oft-repeated saw that the Gigahertz Race really is less important than it seems, since clock speed is only one factor in a computer's overall performance. Oft-repeated, sure, but who expected that it'd turn out to be true? Even independent testing by Wintel-centric publications has yielded grudging admissions that Apple's dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 is at least competitive with, if not measurably faster than, a dual 3.0 GHz Xeon system. (You know the G5 is fast when Apple starts quoting PC Magazine and Computerworld in its G5 marketing materials.) So with a little luck, the 3 GHz G5 vs. 4 GHz Wintel bakeoffs next year might reveal the Mac to be an even clearer winner.

That said, we have just two words for IBM (okay, two words, a number, and an abbreviation): 5 GHz by April. Pretty please?