The My Mac Home Front
I want to take a moment and congratulate My Mac columnist Derek K. Miller and his wife on the birth of their second daughter! From everyone here at My Mac, Derek, we wish you, your wife, your first daughter and her new sister the very best!

Bill Perry sent me an interesting URL about the guy who pretended to be President Clinton during a CNN chat. Check it out here... http://www.boredom.org/cnn

  As you may have noticed starting last month, the staff members now have their pictures displayed in their columns. We feel this helps makes My Mac's writers more familiar and "real" to our readers. (The picture above of me, with the sunglasses on, was taken in San Francisco by Adam, and I hate it!) The thing is, where do we put Jim Moravec's picture? Jim is our editor, but he doesn't write a regular column (though he has been known to send one in every now and then). But he did send me a picture, so here it is: (Hey, Jim, betcha' didn't think I would actually post this one, did ya? HA!) :-)

To buy or not to buy...
Well, after many months of speculation, Apple finally released the long awaited "Pismo" PowerBook to much fanfare at Macworld Expo Tokyo. And while it didn't sport the iBook's "clam shell" design as many people and websites predicted (thank goodness), it did bump up all the specs for the machine.

I own a 400MHz G3 "Lombard" PowerBook myself, so I thought it would be fun to sit here and decide if I should have waited for this new PowerBook, like many people did, or if I in fact made the right decision when I purchased my Lombard.

SCSI vs. FireWire
The major difference between the top-of-the-line PowerBook today and mine is the addition of a FireWire port on the Pismo, while my Lombard has a SCSI port. Well, I don't plan on recording any movies anytime soon, and my camcorder doesn't have a FireWire port, anyway. I have not seen any FireWire products out there I really "must have" or which there is not a comparable SCSI edition of same. Most of the new peripherals, it seems, now come with a USB port, which I have on the Lombard. So as far as FireWire goes, in all honesty I would rather have built-in SCSI support. (I own many SCSI peripherals, such as CD burners and scanners, which I would not be able to use on the stock, out-of-the-box Pismo PowerBook) Besides, if and when a FireWire product is released that I "must have", I can always add a FireWire card to my Lombard.

AirPort
The new PowerBook is AirPort ready, now making everything coming from Apple ready for wireless functioning. This is very cool, but as a Lombard owner, there are cards I can buy which will also give me wireless options (the SkyLINE 11Mb PC Card from Farallon, for instance). But the fact is that Apple has shown a commitment to the wireless technology, and now any new Mac you buy is ready to take advantage of this fantastic technology.

400MHz vs 500MHz
When I got my Lombard, it was the fastest PowerBook you could get. It was a choice between 333MHz and 400MHz. I went with the faster machine, as my primary job dictates I open very large graphic files all day long. The faster 500MHz Pismo machine, with a much better and faster 100MHz system bus (the same unified architecture found in all the rest of Apple product line) means the new Pismo 'Books will feel much snappier than the 400MHz Lombard. In this area, the Pismo would have been a better machine.

ATI Mobility card
The new PowerBook ships with a much better graphic card than in the Lombard machines. This is great! I wish I had this card in my PowerBook.

The backside cache is also doubled in the new Pismo, which will also contribute to faster operation. If you have a small cache in your computer, you might want to consider upgrading it to at least 1 or 2MB, if you can. It will make a large difference in your computer's performance.

Memory
The 500MHz Pismo also comes standard with 128MB of RAM, as well as a 12GB hard drive. Wow! I wish my Lombard had 128MB standard, but of course the first thing I did with my PowerBook was to upgrade the memory. The extra hard drive space would also have been nice, but I've had no problems with the 6GB drive in my Lombard. I think I still have at least 2.5GB free, and much of what is currently on that drive could be archived to CD.

The styling of the Lombard and Pismo is the same. While the rest of Apple's product line all comes in translucent colors, the professional PowerBook line does not. And for that, I thank Apple. If I want a colorful portable, I will buy an iBook. But where I work I deal with some very conservative upper-echelon executives, and I know I'd feel a little out of place with a see-through Tangerine portable computer. My portable really does have to look professional, and the current crop from Apple certainly meets that need.

All in all, the new PowerBooks are an impressive lot. So, to answer my own questions, should I have waited for this machine to come out, or was the Lombard purchase the wise one? Well, I knew the answer even before I started writing this column: the Lombard was the correct choice. Why? Because I needed the top-of-the-line PowerBook six months ago, and I would have gained nothing in the intervening time by waiting for the Pismo. A good rule of thumb I tell all my Mac friends: buy the Mac you need right now, no matter what Apple may have coming down the pike. Apple, and every other computer manufacturer, will always release a computer faster, more powerful, and cheaper than the one you buy today. But you can't play the waiting game, hoping to get the latest and greatest. The machine you buy today will NOT be "obsolete" in six months, or even a year from now, for that matter. You will continue to use and enjoy it, and you can always upgrade it at a later time. One example: people who purchased a 333MHz iMac six months ago can now upgrade their machines with an iMAXpowr G3 466 from Newer Technology, making those iMacs faster than any iMac you can currently buy from Apple.

So no, don't play the waiting game. The current crop of Macs from Apple are indeed great, but chances are so is your current Mac. If you need more power than you current Mac gives you, first look at the upgrade market, because there are really some fantastic products and companies out there ready to help. And if you can't find anything out there which will give you the performance you need, then give a good long look at what Apple has for sale.

New iBook
Apple also released a new iBook in Japan. I was very surprised when I got an email from Babes in Boyland columnist Beth Lock informing me she had up and purchased one. Way to go, Beth! (Read her column about it only on our website at (http://www.mymac.com/exclusives/web_only/boyland_21900.shtml).

The new iBook (picture courtesy of Apple's website) is an impressive looking machine. Graphite in color, it also provides 66MHz more processing power than the base iBook, as well as... well, everything else about the iBook SE is the same as a Blueberry or Tangerine iBook. Well, almost the same. You also have to pay $200 more for the Graphite color and the 20% increase in processor speed. 20% may sound like a lot, but really is only slightly noticable.

The stock iBook comes with a 12.1 TFT SVGA screen, 300MHz G3 processor (366MHz in the SE) 64MB of memory, and 6GB of storage space.

The additional 32MB of memory over the original iBook is a welcome addition. 32MB is simply NOT enough for any new computer, not even a Mac. 64MB is better. But why don't you get at least 128MB in the iBook SE? Or at least a bigger hard drive? That makes no sense to me at all. In fact, for all intents and purposes, all you really get with the SE is a different color. Uh, Apple? Hello?

But the big thing I'm dumbfounded about is the fact that there is STILL no DVD iBook out there. All three of the other Macs--PowerMac, iMac, and PowerBook--all come with DVD. (The low-end iMac does not, but it only costs $999) What's the hold-up? Give us a DVD iBook, already!