Apple's switch to the PowerPC had certainly gotten off to something of a shaky start with the 6X00 series but by the time the 7X00 series had appeared, most of the bugs and problems had been ironed out. Running at a blistering 66MHz, the PowerMac 7100 had been a solid and dependable machine but time waits for neither man or machine and after nearly 18 months, it was time for the new generation of machines to set the pace.

Launched alongside the PowerMac 7200, the 7500 used the new TNT architecture and introduced a brand new case design which allowed users to slide off the lid, flip out the PSU and have complete access to the motherboard - a far cry from some of the cases that had gone before. Despite looking identical to the 7200, the 7500 had several bits and pieces that justified its higher price...and it wasn't just a slightly higher CPU speed.

While the 7200 was launched in 75Mhz and 90MHz versions (a 120MHz version would appear eight months later) the 7500 was only available as a 100MHz machine. In this case though that wasn't a massive problem as Apple mounted the CPU on a daughtercard (rather than directly onto the motherboard) which allowed users to simply swap the card and relace the entire CPU with something faster. Coupled with 8 DIMM slots (allowing up to 1Gb of RAM), three PCI slots and the ability to add a Zip drive and/or a second 3.5" disk and the 7500 immediately had a long-term future ahead of it. If this was the end of the story then the 7500 would have struggled to justify it's bigger price but the machine had one last trick up its sleeve: Video. Onboard monitor output was a given but the 7500 came with video output and video input.

Shipping with either 8Mb or 16Mb of RAM and either a 512Mb or 1Gb hard drive, the 7500 may not have been the prettiest of machines but it was a workhorse that more than met user's expectations.

Sometimes life is bad and sometimes life is good and, having acquired all but one of the 7X00 series PowerMacs, it looked like life was being bad. As is always the way, as soon as you want something it usually becomes scarce and this was very much the case with the PowerMac 7500. Although a couple of examples had come up for sale, they either went for stupid money or had ridiculous conditions attached to them (e.g. collect from several hundred miles away...and no postage).

After biding my time though a 7500 finally came up which was a) reasonably priced (£5), b) able to be posted and c) worked. Bought and duly paid for, the machine arrived in double-quick time and what a buy it was. Complete with keyboard, mouse, original install media and user manual, the little machine was in pretty much pristine condition. Better though was that the original hard drive had been supplemented with a 6Gb drive - given that it's SCSI based means that we now have a very handy spare drive (these things are getting harder and harder to find these days).

Performance wise the 7500 is 'reasonable'. Running at a now pedestrian 100MHz, it's hardly up to being compared alongside G3s and G4s but it's a solid machine. The audio and video inputs/outputs are coupled with something that can keep up with the data (unlike the older Quadra and Centris 'AV' machines - they're nice but simply too underpowered to do video any great justice) and, all in all, the 7500 is a nice machine. It's not a speed demon by modern standards but if your intentions are modest and reasonable, you could do a lot worse than one of these little beauties...especially as they're ridiculously cheap at the moment.