According to MacWorld's Complete Mac Handbook, Apple created the Performa
line to be sold at electronics and department stores. They had to call
them by a different name because alot of their contracts with Mac
resellere gave them exclusive rights to the market area they sold in. So
Apple changed the name of the machines, sold the resellers the Macs, and
the chain stores the performas. Sounds like the resellers got hosed on
that deal to me.
From my investigations into the Performa 3xx and 475 machines, I determined that the standard machines were sold in relatively powerful configurations (RAM, Hard Disk etc..) with options available to enhance the machine further, but virtually no bundled software outside the Mac OS. In contrast Education and Home packages (mostly LCs and Performas) consisted of fixed configurations, usually with the smallest available Hard Disk and minimal RAM with various software packages, such as encyclopedia CDs and the like.
The Performa market relied on people being able to get the machine upgraded by Apple Service specialists and being able to add external peripherals easily via SCSI, where as the pro market was more concentrated on letting the business assess what they needed the machine to be set up like and maybe get their tech dept. to upgrade it internally later - also adding SCSI and other features as easily as anyone else. It was great in theory but the home solution had a larger long-term cost (Apple labor charges, price of SCSI hard disk/CD hardware etc..) to balance it's immediate 'good value' feel.
I don't think i explained that very well but it think u get the idea :D
-- Mark Benson
AIM - SilValleyPirate MSN - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit FlatPackMacs online: <http://fpm.68kmac.com> Visit my Homepage: <http://homepage.mac.com/markbenson>
"Never send a human to do a machine's job."
-The Matrix
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