Xtrem has provisionally set January 2001 as the ship date for its much-anticipated - and scepticism-inducing - 1.2GHz Macintosh, XtremMac

The Sweden-based hardware company caused controversy last summer when it announced a modified Mac equipped with a proprietary cooling system to chill the computer's processor right down to a point where it can be overclocked to 1.2GHz - far in excess of the PowerPC's native speed.

At room temperature, speeding up a processor's clock that much would cause it to overheat and malfunction.

An Xtrem spokeswoman told us the company "can't specify a delivery date or exact price". However, "late January 2001" is the company's "preliminary" ship date. The XtremMac will provisionally ship for $2000.

"I know that the first units will go to dealers and a few larger corporations that have special interest in the project," she told The Register. She did not say who those corporations are.

Xtrem will make an announcement concerning progress on the development of XtremMac very shortly, she added, "most likely within two weeks".

In addition to Xtrem's Active Cooling System technology, XtremMac - which is essentially a customised off-the-shelf Power Mac in a new, aluminium case - will also include a 320MBps SCSI RAID Controller; DVD or DVD-RAM; CD or CD-R; Zip, Jaz or Orb removable storage; and ATI Rage Pro 128 or Radeon, 3dfx Voodoo 5, or Nvidia GeForce 2MX graphics.

Or so the company claims - it admits the final specification and optional extras are subject to change. ®

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