When Future Power introduced their E-Power iMac knockoff, everybody knew that it was nothing more than a shameless copy of Apple's design stuffed with rather mediocre Wintel hardware. Thus, only a handful of people were surprised when iCEO Steve Jobs ordered his lawyers to file a copyright infringement suit. If anything, Apple will have no trouble showing that out of a million different configurations and color schemes, Future Power did indeed select a design that is remarkably similar to Apple's, right down to the exact placement of blue color highlights.

Soon thereafter, a much more respectable establishment, namely eMachines, has followed the same route and ... scored a similar lawsuit. However, there are a couple of considerable differences between the two cases. First of all, eMachines already has a retail market share that is comparable to that of Apple, with both companies claiming to be in the #3 spot. Furthermore, eMachines' presence in stores like CompUSA and Circuit City provides them with a great way to promote their iMac-inspired creation, the not-so-subtly-named eOne.

The second point that differentiates eOne from E-Power is the totally shocking revelation that the former does sport quite a few features that are nothing short of innovative. Unlike eMachines' other offerings, which are hardly more than attractively-priced "white boxes," eOne offers a number of things that are not usually associated with sub-$1K PCs.

Perhaps the most peculiar manifestation of eMachines' novel approach to computing is the fact that eOne is designed to operate as a stand-alone entertainment system. The machine's internal CD player can be controlled using the front-mounted buttons even when the computer is powered down. While this feature has been present on many notebooks, I am not aware of any other desktop that could double as a boom box.

Another notable advancement made by eMachines is the inclusion of two PC card slots. This is a fairly unique capability (previously offered only in much higher priced desktop computers) that could let the machine's owners share PCMCIA devices with their laptops. Also, this could make it possible to, say, synchronize a Rex organizer without an external cradle.

One other nicety that is not found on any other Wintel machine is the ability to plug the included PS/2 mouse straight into the keyboard, reducing the possibility of the cables getting all tangled up. Incidentally, this has been a Mac feature since 1984, but hey, it's a good thing!

For better or worse, eOne ships with a full array of legacy hardware, including a floppy drive, serial, parallel, and MIDI ports. Video-in and audio-in support, as well as Intel home networking, are other nice touches that differentiates it from the iMac.

Having said that, I still believe that Apple has a strong legal case. The two-tone coloring recipe, the truncated laptop-sized keyboard, and even the shape and placement of the power button are nearly identical. The argument that "all great minds think alike" doesn't quite hold either. After all, is it written in the stars that speakers must be embedded into the front panel below the monitor? It makes just about the same amount of sense to place them on the sides (like those of many multimedia monitors), or build them into the keyboard, or make them slide out of the back and be detachable. For those with imagination, the possibilities are endless.

In one word, it's still a rip-off. Nevertheless it's a rip-off that can give Apple a number of clues for incremental improvement that could be build into the next generation iMac. And that, my dear readers, is what progress is all about.