Open Tech Follows Psystar…Sort Of

When Psystar offered a Mac clone, it found itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit from Apple. Now another company is planning to offer machines that emulate Macs, but with a difference – if you wants to fun OS X you have to buy and install the software yourself, ZDNet reports. However, as that involves hardware running specialized firmware called the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), it’s not easy.

In a statement later removed from its website, Open Tech said that "OS X Leopard will not be pre-installed or included. You can purchase an Open Tech compatible install disc from a third-party vendor or install it yourself using our do-it-yourself kit."

Open Tech remains a bit of a mystery, with no street address or landline number listed, and a website with a .tk (Tokelua) address and is hosted by Freewebs – the essence of anonymity. It lists two computers as upcoming products, with no release date given: the Open Tech Home for $620 and XT for $1200. The former has an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor, 2GB of DDR RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and an Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT graphics card, while the latter sports an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz processor, 4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, an Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT graphics card and a 640GB hard drive.

Although they claim the machines can run OS X, Open Tech also says that the computers are "fully capable of running most popular operating systems."