In the sub-$2,000 category, we thought it would be negligent to leave Apple, and its popular eMac, out of the running. While we can't benchmark it head to head with the PCs, at least we can compare the features and see what alternatives there are to mainstream PCs in the world. Interestingly, the eMac (as its prefix implies) was originally intended for the education market, but it proved to be such a success it was cut loose into the broader retail market.
One of the best features of the eMac is the software bundle. While there isn't the same huge range of software available for OS X as there is for Windows, there are still plenty of good apps around -- including Apple's own iLife 04 suite. This includes iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD and the excellent GarageBand. All these applications are fairly basic, but they are all best in their class across both Mac and PC platforms.
Going hand in hand with iDVD, is Apple's SuperDrive, which is a 4x DVD-R and DVD-ROM. With this you can connect your DV cam to one of the two six-pin FireWire ports on the right-hand side of the chassis, edit your clips using iDVD and then burn from the same unit without the need for additional disc authoring software.
There are plenty of options for configuration including larger hard disk, more RAM, 802.11g AirPort Extreme wireless and a .Mac account, giving you 100MB of web space, Virex virus protection and .Mac mail.
Unfortunately, as far as upgradeability goes, once you've purchased your configured eMac, you're stuck with it, as you're unable to open it up and perform surgery. Apple CPUs are soldered directly to the motherboard, so there's no popping out the old one and whacking in a newer faster one. There's no option for PCI expansion, and graphics on our model were limited to a 32MB ATI RADEON 7500 with max resolution of 1,280 x 960.
If space saving is your biggest concern and performance second, the eMac is certainly capable, featuring a single chassis for PC and monitor. But performance-wise, eMac's 1GHz G4 CPU is well behind today's Pentium 4s and the 256MB of RAM will strain under the weight of OS X.