(FORTUNE Magazine) – After years of boring beige boxes, desktop PCs are starting to look interesting. Manufacturers are breaking out of the routine of making machines that will offend no one and now want to make products that stand out.

One impetus for this change is Apple Computer's iMac, which proved that skin-deep beauty on the desktop can be a bestseller--especially if it comes in candy colors of blue, lime green, and orange. The one-piece iMac has been so popular that others were bound to copy it. But there's another reason PCs are starting to look different: The technology is also shifting. Flat-panel screens, built-in components, and more-compact circuitboards have given designers more options. Other computers have tried to break the beige mold. Several years ago Taiwanese manufacturer Acer introduced the Aspire, a one-piece desktop machine in dark gray and forest green. But Acer, a major player in PC markets everywhere but the U.S., caused hardly a ripple. This year Sony took its considerable design and miniaturization skills and applied them to the desktop, creating the Sony VAIO Slimtop, a compact machine with a flat-panel screen and a very small box, measuring just 11 by four by 13 inches.

The two products in this column reflect both trends in PC design. One is an unabashed knockoff, as they say in the fashion industry, of the iMac's eye-catching design. The other reflects technological advances that signal what PCs will look like in the very near future.

The eOne from eMachines looks enough like the iMac to make a Mac fanatic do a double take. First out of the gate with an iMac look-alike is eMachines, an Irvine, Calif., company that makes low-cost PCs and sells through such chains as Office Depot and Circuit City. (Apple--not flattered by the imitation--has sued the manufacturer for infringement.) The eOne, like the iMac, combines monitor and CPU into a large, rounded box made of translucent blue and white plastic. There's a plastic keyboard and a multicolor connection cable, just like the iMac's. And there's a big plastic handle on top, as on the--well, you get the idea--so you can pick up the unit and move it around. I say "move" rather than "carry" because, at 54 pounds, any attempt to lift the eOne without frequent exercise can be a hernia-inducing event.

However, there is no similarity under the skin. The eOne is an unabashed Windows PC in iMac clothing, running Windows 98. It comes with both a CD-ROM and a floppy drive (which Apple's acting CEO Steve Jobs has dismissed as passe)--and a slot for add-on PC Cards, which more desktop machines should include. There are plenty of connectors (conveniently on the right side), including modem lines and a network adapter as well as audio and video inputs. The 14-inch built-in monitor delivers a decent, if unspectacular, image.

As Windows machines go, the eOne is powerful enough for common tasks such as word-processing, e-mail, and Web hopping, but it's no rubber burner. Not that you can expect screaming tires at $799 (after a $50 mail-in rebate), $400 less than the genuine iMac. (Sign up for three years with Compuserve, and you'll get another $400 rebate--bringing the cost of the eOne down to an amazing $399.) The eOne is, however, adequately powered for the price, with a 433Mhz Intel Celeron chip, 64MB of RAM, and an ATI Rage Pro graphics adapter.

The eOne offers one interesting ease-of-use touch: dedicated keys. There's a sleep button to put the machine into hibernation; an e-mail key that brings up Microsoft Outlook Express; and an Internet key that invokes Internet Explorer. You can, of course, change the settings for these buttons. What you don't get is the relative friendliness of the Mac operating system. But as copies go, eOne is not a bad first attempt. Let's hope the iMac will spawn more inspired imitators.

For a very different approach to design, look at the Gateway Profile. Taking flat screens and smaller components a step further than Sony, the mail-order manufacturer has managed to create what it calls an "all in one" desktop. On your desk, you have only the 15-inch flat screen and the keyboard and mouse. The stuff that traditionally went into the beige box is stored in the back of the flat-screen monitor, bringing it to a thickness of three inches. But the Profile takes up a small footprint on your desk, one of the main objectives in these new designs.

The Profile has some other nice design touches. The CD-ROM and floppy drives are integrated on the sides of the monitor, and there are modem and Ethernet plugs in the back. Powered by an AMD K6-2 400MHz processor, this machine has enough muscle for most PC tasks. Prices start at $1,999 and go up to $2,399 with a DVD-ROM, a larger 6.4GB hard drive, and Microsoft's Office 2000 suite.

Expect to see more design innovation in the next 12 months. Intel and Microsoft have persuaded major PC manufacturers to support their Easy PC initiative, which seeks to make a simpler machine by breaking the links with the PC's "legacy." The beige box survived as long as it did to give owners the option of adding PC cards for networking, sound, video capture, and other functions. But as microprocessors got cheaper, many of those components were built into new PCs. With the need for the box on its way out, PC makers have a chance to literally break out of the box in their thinking about design.

In the first round of this effort last year, Intel showed a prototype pyramid-shaped PC as a model of what could be. More important than the California-crystal-vibrations look, the Intel pyramid couldn't be opened. All devices would attach externally, something made feasible by new, fast connection standards adopted in recent years for USB and Firewire. We can hardly wait for what PC designers will come up with next. Did I really say that?