Dear Future Gamer,

There's a certain quality about an iMac that no PC will ever possess - it's called F.U.N.K! I will not even try to paint a picture of the iMac as a happening games machine - it just isn't and was never meant to be. Apple went out and made computers sexy, and in the process of that they got a lot of people interested in purchasing a (new) computer, who may not have thought about these things before.

The whole issue just goes to show that the time when computers could be sold on their technical specs alone is coming to an end. Adding personality to something that people like me perceived as a mere tool to get one's work done has been a stroke of genius.

Personally I always thought PCs were expensive, and playing games on them was a chore (and they look boring as well). I have always owned a PlayStation as well (although the games lately are a mess - Metal Gear Solid in German - God help us all!). There are, of course, loads of brilliant games on the PC (Jedi Knight, Quake 2, Command and Conquer series ), but paying a grand for something to play games on? No way, I haven't got that kind of money.

The iMac has got me interested in computing in general - it gets me onto the Internet, I mess around with Photoshop, and I can play Quake, too. I'm sure there are a lot of faster computers on the market (and 32Mb RAM is quite ridiculous as well), but I never imagined working on a computer could be fun, and it looks bloody cool on my desk. Which is a brilliant reason for buying a computer - at least in my opinion. A friend of mine told me an iMac was a 'women's computer'. I'll take that as a compliment then.

Martin Neumann

FG: Apple's iMac is indeed a user-friendly and good-looking piece of kit. And if it helps make computers and computing more accessible then that's got to be a good thing, surely? It's not a happening games machine at the moment but that's slowly changing as more software houses realise there's a market for Mac games.