33MHz 68030/4 megabytes RAM/120 megabyte hard drive;
$1959 Cdn. (US. ApplePrice $1449)
Reviewing Apple’s new PowerBook 150 poses a basic problem:
does one review the product for what it is supposed to be, or what
it is not? Likely destined to be the Apple’s last computer based upon the
antiquated 68030 processor, the PowerBook 150 is technologically less of a Macintosh than any of its predecessors. Yet that is exactly what it is designed to be: a bare-bones system which deli- vers the right combination of expandability, performance and price to a low-end market. As a reviewer, I must critique the product based upon this assertion.
At first glance, the PowerBook 150 appears nearly identical to other 100-series PowerBooks, save for its industry-standard 640x480 pixel display. A quick look at the back panel of the machine, however, reveals much about the stripped-down system. Thankfully missing from the PowerBook 150 is the flimsy plastic door which covered the ports on all previous 100-series PowerBooks. The reason for its omission is immediately obvious: the PowerBook 150 has all of two ports (SCSI and LocalTalk). Citing that most 145B customers didn’t use them, Apple trim- med the external modem, ADB, sound-in and sound-out ports. (Like the 145B and 145 before it, the PowerBook 150 does not support video-out.) The PowerBook 150 also sports an internal modem slot, designed to be compatible with all existing 100-series modems*. It must be noted, however, that with no cover for protection, the 150’s few ports are left exposed to dirt and other unfriendly materials that collect in the bottom of briefcases and bookbags.
The PowerBook 150 ships without system software, as did the 145B, and Apple suggests the new user back up their system immediately with the included back-up software. The 150 includes the impressive PowerBook Mobility Bundle previously shipped with the PowerBook 500’s, which includes AppleTalk Remote Access Client, PC Exchange, Dataviz Translators, the Power- Book File Assistant, the Control Strip, the Launcher and HyperCard. In addition, you’ll find a copy of ClarisWorks 2.1 on the hard drive, and in the US., e•World software for connection to Apple’s new online service. It appears Apple has finally realized that bundled software (which is actually useful) makes a PowerBook a much more attractive package.
One remarkable tidbit about the PowerBook 150 is that it is at least 1.3 pounds lighter than any of its siblings. At only 5.5 pounds, this full-size PowerBook is pleasure to lug around. Apple was able to keep the weight down by using a lighter display, floppy drive and a single (and virtually portless) logic board design, based upon those used in the PowerBook Duos. Previous 100-series PowerBooks used a mother board/daughter card design.
Borrowing again from its light-weight cousins, the PowerBook 150 uses Duo memory modules for RAM expansion up to a whopping 40 megabytes (odd that a machine of such limited design has the greatest RAM expansion capacity of any PowerBook). The switch to Duo RAM is a welcome change, as such memory modules are considerably less costly than those previously required by other 100-series PowerBooks. In addition, developers don’t have to scramble to modify their memory-card designs to accommodate the new machine’s internal architecture, as they often had to in the past.
Performance of the 33MHz 68030-based PowerBook 150 is approximately half of that of a 25MHz 68040 Macintosh system; certainly suitable for non-demanding tasks such as basic wordprocessing, spreadsheeting and telecommunication. If you require a PowerBook for desktop publishing or illustration, you should look to the 500-series. In today’s business environment, using a slower '030 based Macintosh for more complicated operations often results in long waits and lost productivity.
While the PowerBook 150 may borrow its logic board design from the Duo, it does not utilize the Duo’s longer lasting nickel-metal hydride batteries. Instead, the PowerBook 150 uses the same NiCad battery found in its predecessors. Like the 145B, the 150 is purported to provide between two and four hours of use from one charge. In real terms, a charged battery will give you about 1.5 to 2.5 hours of uninterrupted use.
Two things which are especially puzzling about the PowerBook 150 are the bit-depth of the display and the use of an IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) drive. Though the 150’s full-size display is very bright and easy to read, it is limited to four shades of gray. Earlier reports had indicated that this PowerBook could be configured to display 16 shades of gray at a 640x400 resolution; when the final product was delivered, however, this proved to be false. Despite the fact that the 150 is designed to be a minimalist system, it is irrational that this PowerBook was not configured to display 16 shades of gray at 640x480. Apple certainly couldn’t have feared that the inclusion of a 4-bit display would have cut into sales of the PowerBook 520, given the gee-whiz factor of the 520’s 16-bit stereo sound and speakers, dual-battery compartment, trackpad, ‘040 processor and PCMCIA option. Though it is a step up from the 145B’s black and white screen, the PowerBook 150’s struggle to display detailed color or grayscale graphics with only four shades of gray is futile, rendering the feature next to useless. To see for yourself, switch your Macintosh to four grays and examine the graphics in this magazine.
The use of a lower-cost IDE drive in a Macintosh is also a confusing choice. SCSI has been the Macintosh drive standard and has long been touted as superior to IDE. Apple’s choice to use IDE to save $20 or $30 per unit is mind-boggling – I’d gladly pay the extra cash knowing I’d get a better drive. On the other hand, the PowerBook 150 is a bare-bones Mac and buyers paying this little for a system may not care what drive is in it, as long as it works reliably.
The most disconcerting thing about the PowerBook 150 is its price tag. With all the advanced billing as a minimalist Macintosh system, you’d expect that the price for this bare-bones PowerBook would be somewhat less than the 145B it replaces. Not so. In fact, in both the US. and Canada, you’ll find that the PowerBook 150 is about the same price as was the 145B. Apparent- ly, Apple believes that the 30% increase in speed and the 20% increase in the screen resolution (in addition to four levels of gray) exactly offset the sheer lack of ports. But then, Apple could see the PowerBook 150 as a bare-bones 165.
As stripped down as it is, the PowerBook 150 makes sense for college students and business persons with limited demands from a portable computer system, or as a second Macintosh for those people who require some portability. A potential user with more demanding needs should seriously consider the PowerBook 520.
* Before going to press, MacSense learned from Global Village of a major problem between the PowerBook 150 and existent 100-series modems. Due to a power supply irregularity between the internal modem slot and the modem card, almost all 100-series modems do not function, including Global’s own PowerPort modems. Fortunately, this can be remedied with a simple software fix. Global Village’s latest PowerPort software release, 2.08a, allegedly works around the power problem, so that all PowerPort modems function properly when installed in the PowerBook 150. Version 2.08a of the PowerPort software can be found on most large on-line services.
 
  
Jordan Mechner’s latest offering, Prince of Persia II: The Shadow and the
Flame ($40 US., $55 Cdn.), is an engaging successor to the original. Fea-
turing incredibly fluid animation and highly detailed graphics, this adven-
ture’s ever changing landscapes compel you to finish each level simply to discover what lays ahead. The combination of the mesmerizing visuals and a surprisingly well-written soundtrack completely immerses you into the story line.
Set eleven days after the completion of the last adventure, Prince of Persia II begins with the return of the evil Vizier Jaffar. Impersonating you and taking your place at the princess’ side, Jaffar makes you appear as a poor beggar, demanding that you be taken into custody. You then flee the palace, beginning your quest to restore your name and save Persia from the clutches of Jaffar.
Game play is essentially identical to the first adventure: you must rescue the princess and save Persia from tyranny while battling evil swordsmen, avoiding treacherous pathways and over- coming dangerous obstacles. As in the original, you must race against a time counter, which gives you just 70 minutes to complete the
game after completion of level three.  
There are secret passageways and
hidden areas in most levels, contain-
ing potions which give you special
powers or extra lives. It can often
be tricky (or even deadly) trying
to find them.
Prince of Persia II requires a 256-
color Macintosh, 4 megabytes of RAM
(2.5 MB available), System 6.0.7 or
higher and a hard disk with at least
15 megabytes free. One useful option
allows you to compress the game data on your hard drive to save approximately 2 megabytes of disk space. While it does not interfere with game play, the option takes 10-100 minutes to install, depending on the speed of your Mac.
Although Prince Of Persia II drastically improves upon its predecessor, it does have a number of minor irritants. The copy protection scheme can be agonizing with repeated game play: after the completion of a level or the opening of a saved game you must match the symbol on the screen with a corresponding symbol from the manual. This is, however, much better than the original game’s copy protection scheme, which had you flipping through the manual to find things such as “the fifth letter of the third word on line six of page 18”.
Because the game absolutely requires 256 colors and ships with high-density disks, Mac users who do not have a 256-color display or who only have an 800k drive will be unable to play the game. In addition, if your monitor is set to more or less than 256 colors, Prince of Persia II does not automatically switch your monitor bit-depth (as most newer game software does). Instead, it gives an error message stating that a 256-color display and Color QuickDraw are required, and then self-quits.
Aside from these minor flaws, Prince of Persia II: The Shadow and the Flame is an exciting and challenging adventure. With its excellent graphics and music, this game is destined to be a classic.
 
 
 
Norton Utilities 3.0 – perhaps one of the most anti-
cipated software releases of the year – is finally out,
for both Macintosh and Power Macintosh! This new
version is a blessing for Information Systems Mana-
gers and consumers alike, sporting a hoard of new
features. It has been well over two years since Symantec updated Norton Utilities for the Macin- tosh (NUM), and – take it from me – the new capabilities are well worth the wait.
Norton Utilities for Macintosh 3.0 comes with a smart installer which automatically detects your CPU type (PowerPC or 680x0) and installs the appropriate software code. Though slapping an “Accelerated for Power Macintosh” sticker on the packaging is certain to please the over 345,000 new Power Mac owners world-wide, the PowerPC native-code version of NUM 3.0 addresses more than simple compatibility. When installed on Power Macintoshes, Norton Util- ities 3.0 is one speed demon. We ran some preliminary tests on a Power Macintosh 8100/80AV with a one gigabyte SCSI-2 hard drive using NUM 3.0’s Fast Find application. In various tests, we came up with search times varying from three to five seconds - a huge performance increase over Norton 2.0’s Fast Find and System 7.1’s Find command.
One of NUM 3.0’s best new features addresses the emergency disk incompatibilities caused by the introduction of System 7.1’s enabler-based startup scheme. Norton 2.0’s emergency disks had little room to hold a system enabler, required to boot all new Macs since the IIvx. With the debut of the Macintosh AV’s and Power Macs, system enablers grew in size, and Information Systems Managers had little hope but to boot from CD-ROM (if available) or resort to another utility altogether. NUM 3.0 sports a utility called ‘Startup Disk Builder’, which allows you to create emergency disks for any Macintosh. The disk is automatically configured with the appropriate enabler (or components of it), allowing for problem-free booting from a floppy disk in the event of hard drive failure.
Norton Utilities 3.0 adds an impressive benchmark and testing program, a feature which was lacking in NUM 2.0. The included ‘System Info’ utility tests disk performance, video, floating- point operations and CPU. In addition, the utility automatically senses any non-standard hard- ware installed in your Macintosh (such as video cards or accelerators). The tests are very comprehensive and allow you to compare your system performance to that of other Macintosh models and various reference levels.
Have you ever tried optimizing and defragmenting your hard disk with NUM’s Speed Disk? With version 2.0, you might be able to run it in less than an hour – if you had several megabytes of unused disk space and your hard drive wasn’t larger than 1000 megabytes. A mildly fragmented 230 megabyte hard drive took an average of 25 minutes to defragment on mid-range Macs. With Speed Disk 3.0, we ran a 500 MB optimization in under 9.5 minutes on a Centris 650 (!), and experienced no problems defragmenting a two gigabyte hard drive. Like its predecessor, Speed Disk 3.0 requires that you boot from another drive in order to defragment your startup volume. Except for a larger graphic area for the volume map, the interface is quite similar to that of version 2.0
Norton Utilities for Macintosh 3.0 also includes FastBack Express 2.0, which replaces Norton Backup in the utilities package. More flexible and customizable than the antiquated Norton Backup, Fastback Express 2.0 offers such features as incremental backups, scheduling and an intuitive interface.
If you have ever accidentally erased a folder of important items and tried to recover them, you know the importance of an unerase utility. Faster and more frequently a lifesaver than its predecessor, Norton’s UnErase 3.0 is a delight to use. We ran some tests on a 500 megabyte swap drive. A folder of mixed items (ResEdit resources, text files, applications) was intentionally trashed. Three days later, we ran UnErase 3.0 and recovered all of the items. Every item was 100% recoverable and showed no errors when opened or used!
The primary utility of this package – Norton Disk Doctor 3.0 – has been completely re-written. (If you have ever used Central Point’s MacTools or Safe & Sound, you will find some similar- ities.) Norton Disk Doctor 3.0 sports checklist-style animations and a more compact interface. Upon a successful disk check or repair, you have the option to view a detailed Disk Repair Report. The report details the complete configuration of your Macintosh, including basic system and hard disk information, installed extensions and control panels, and other components of your system folder (and related version numbers). This is particularly useful if you are having a problem that Norton Disk Doctor 3.0 doesn’t solve — most technical support personnel require that you have this information handy so they can help you trouble shoot.
Norton Utilities 3.0 is only 3.6 megabytes in size when installed, a mere 1100K larger than its predecessor. The package runs exceptionally well on both PowerPC and 680x0 Mac platforms – we found no bugs, glitches, or cosmetic anomalies in any of the utilities, nor can we think of any improvements for this fine piece of software. We truly expect Norton Utilities for Macintosh 3.0 to quickly become the defacto standard for Macintosh preventive maintenance. This product will undoubtedly win many industry ‘Best Utility Software’ awards and is certain to dominate best-seller lists.
Norton Utilities for Macintosh 3.0 should be in stores and available from mail-order retailers by the time you read this, with a suggested retail price of $189 Cdn ($149 US.) MacSense recommends NUM 3.0 for all Macintosh users, be it for home or office use.
