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	Save on DVDs from DVD Express. No DVD? Watch movies on CD from CoolVCD.com Pismo & Thin PowerBooks 22 Dec. 1999 Charles W. Moore Dan Knight has already weighed in on this issue with The Next PowerBooks. I guess great minds think alike. I enjoyed reading Dan's article, and I agree with most of what he said, finding his speculation about a possible thin and compact "MyBook" Apple portable (personally, I prefer the name "eBook" -- for "executive" book) especially interesting. The "thin" laptop category is still a gaping hole in Apple's portable lineup, bleeding sales to the PC side where there is a delicious selection of light and thin portable units. As I've remarked before, the fact that they all arrive running Windows is a bit like meeting a beautiful woman, only to have her reveal a row of rotted teeth when she smiles, but the ascendancy of more user-friendly Linux variants on the PC side, such as CorelLINUX, raises the temptation quotient a few notches. My traditional favorite in this category has long been Sony's light and lovely VAIO, but the new Latitude LS just released by Dell looks like a pretty nice piece too. The Latitude LS ultralight portable packing a 400 MHz Intel Pentium III processor and equipped with a 12.1" active matrix screen, (same size as the one on this PowerBook I'm typing on), all somehow jammed into a thin 3.5 lb package (a bit more than half the weight of the Lombard PowerBook G3). Latitude LS comes with 64MB or 128MB SDRAM memory User-removable 4.8GB1 or 6.4GB internal hard drives, a floppy drive (natch!) in an external media bay, and an optional LS-120 Drive, 24X/10X variable CD-ROM Drive, or 6X DVD Module with MPEG-2, in external media bays respectively. The Latitude LS weighs 3.5 lbs. and measures 1.0"(h) x 10.7"(w) x 8.66"(d). The slightly larger Dell Latitude CS is available with a Pentium III 500MHz processor, 12GB Hard Drive (18GB in external media bay), and a 13.3" XGA color TFT active matrix display ( I hope it's better than the 13.3" unit used in some ot the Series I WallStreets) at 4.3 lbs. (vs. Lombard's 5.8 lbs.) and measures 1.1"(h) x 12.05"(w) x 9.7"(d). These PC notebooks are the form factor Apple need's to shoot for with its hoped for thin PowerBook. Reportedly, Pismo will shed about a pound of weight and a quarter inch of thickness compared with Lombard, but that still makes it apound or so heavier and still thicker than the larger Dell Latitude unit. Pismo (don't bet against it being officially called PowerBook G3) will almost certainly be introduced at Macworld Expo 2000 in San Francisco in early January. There are reports of Lombards being discounted to $2,995, much as the prices dropped significantly on Wall Streets a month or so before Lombard debuted. As Dan pointed out in his column, Pismo will likely be largely an upgrade and bugfix of the current Lombard PowerBook G3 bronze keyboard model, with a faster 100 MHz internal bus, a speed bump of its G3 processor (but no G4), and probably more RAM and bigger hard drives, as well as having FireWire ports superseding the time-honored PowerBook HDI-30 SCSI port, and internal AirPort support. Engineering-wise, O'Grady's PowerPage says that Pismo will have a magnesium (or possibly titanium) sub-frame in order to maintain stiffness and rigidity while the PowerBook loses that quarter inch of thickness and a pound of weight. Apple is not only getting size competition from the PC side, but Hewlett-Packard's new OmniBook 900, a four pound powerhouse that features Intel's fastest laptop CPUs: Mobile Pentium III 500-or 450-MHz or the Pentium II 400- or 366-MHz processor is thought to be about as fast as the current Lombard or even a bit faster. Other OmniBook 900 features include a 13.3-inch 1024 x 768 XGA TFT display with 16 million colors-or 12.1-inch SVGA TFT display with 16 million colors, and a 256-bit, graphics controller with AGP, SXGA-out, MPEG-2 and dual display capability. And while the OmniBook 900 with a 500 MHz Pentium III is estimated to more or less match the current Lombard 400's real-world performance, reportedly, 600 MHz Pentium laptops are on the way as early as January. Some PowerBook fans are reportedly disgruntled at the prospect of losing the SCSI port with Pismo, and there is continued grousing about the absence of Type 3 CardBus PC Card support since WallStreet. Of special concern is the loss of SCSI Disk Mode. Apple apparently thinks Ethernet file transfer is a viable alternative, but for a lot of users it is not. My son, for instance, often uses his Wall Street PowerBook as an external hard drive when troubleshooting and repairing customer machines. My own LC 520 desktop machine is not equipped with ethernet, but can exchange files with my PowerBooks via SCSI disk Mode. These are just a couple of real world examples. Yes, FireWire is the future, but the problem is that it is still the future rather than a mainstream alternative now. I can live without floppies. Not so sure about living without SCSI -- yet. However, I'm not looking for SCSI on Pismo. It will be a nice machine anyway -- fast and powerful, and the easiest to lug G3 'Book yet. I just wish they would name it something other than "PowerBook G3." Recent Miscellaneous Ramblings Cheap Power Macs: The $500 G3 and $750 G4, 5/22/00. You can do it with refurbished Power Macs. Archive: PowerBook 101 Rumors, 3/2/99. This was written two months before the Lombard was introduced. Archive: Miscellaneous Ramblings: No New 'Books -- Yet, 2/19/99. Miscellaneous Ramblings: Frankenstein Power Mac 9500 Letters, 5/12/00. A mailbag column with lots of reader feedback on the dead 9500. Archive: Mice of many colors, for-floppy feedback, and Apple support resolution, Charles W. Moore, 2/12/99. More on the Miscellaneous Ramblings home page. Recent Editorials at Low End Mac Low End Mac gets iReviewed, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 5/24. "Apple 'iReviewed' Low End Mac on May 22, 2000, noting it fills a unique niche and is easy to search." A computer I understood, Cheryl Hanna, My First Mac, 5/23. "Here was a computer that I understood without translation." Software to make life easier, Evan, Mac Happens, 5/23. Helpful software you may never have heard of. Beta than nothing, David Schultz, Virtuality, 5/23. Beta testing isn't for everyone. David Schultz offers advice on preparing your Mac for the OS X beta. Not raising the dead, Manuel Mejia Jr, Mac Daniel, 5/22. Sometimes it doesn't make economic sense to revive a dead Mac, but even in death their parts can save others. What can you squeeze into a compact Mac?, Adam Robert Guha, Apple Archive, 5/18. There's still life in those little Macs. New @ Low End Mac: Receive email information on new links. Biography Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 -- and writing for Mac web sites since May 1998. His The Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOS Daily, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com. Charles lives and works in Port Hilford, Nova Scotia, on the shore of Indian Harbour Lake and in sight of the Atlantic Ocean. His newspaper columns are syndicated across Canada, and he writes regularly for several magazines, as well as doing Mac website journalism. Charles has also contributed to MacToday magazine. His current stable of Macs includes a Mac Plus, an LC 520, a Power Mac 9500, a PowerBook 5300, and a PowerBook G3 Series II/233. Macinstein Banner Exchange Low End Mac begun April 7, 1997. Miscellaneous Ramblings ©1999-2000 by Charles Moore. The remainder of the Low End Mac site and all other subsites of <lowendmac.net> copyright ©1997-2000 by Dan Knight unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. LINK POLICY: This site affirms Open Link. It allows and encourages links to any public page, so long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking the linked page. Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Computer, Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iMac, and iBook are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are hereby acknowledged.	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