Welcome to the April 1997 edition of Hard Copy
(alias Hardware)
By Brian Fouhse
(c) copyright 1997 Regina Saskatchewan

I hope these ramblings are of some interest to our members and readers. Of
course, all the opinions and items mentioned are mine alone, and should not
be used as the basis for any investments or purchase decisions without your
own considerations.

My title as hardware director is somewhat deceitful, I'm actually as
interested in software. Funny thing, it takes both to make a computer more
interesting than being a paperweight.

Recently, the rest of Canada and the US switched over to daylight savings
time. During this imaginary turmoil, I had the following brain wave: The
reason that there are so many VCRs in the world blinking 12:00 is due to
the existence of daylight savings time. It is totally artificial, and
forces those individuals to set there VCRs not once, not even after every
power failure, but twice a year as a minimum. Knowing the user-friendliness
of some of the user interfaces on these VCRs is less than ideal, it's no
wonder.

A question for some of our more experienced net hoppers, is there an easy
way to turn off the web pages animations? I recall an option on one site in
Australia that offered to do that, was it just for that site? As I only
have a 14.4K baud modem, the time it takes to keep the frills going often
makes the content of the web page painfully slow in loading.

On the topic of PPCP (Power PC Platform)

This is the open specification that the big three, Apple, IBM, and Motorola
created to allow anyone to build a clone computer that could run any of the
qualified operating systems easily. The intent was to let any hardware
platform access any of the supported software. On this list were the
Macintosh operating system, IBM's Unix, Sun Solaris, Windows NT (big
brother of Windows 3.1 and 95) and a few others.

Somewhere along the way, Microsoft raised the price of porting its future
version of WinNT to some ungodly amount that was much higher than either
IBM or Motorola were willing to pay. The future of Windows NT support past
the current version of 4.0 is, therefore, in jeopardy. Some talk has gone
on about the possibility of a third party developer doing the software, but
it may or may not happen. In light of the NeXT operating system purchase by
Apple, and the use of this technology for the next version of MacOS (code
named Rhapsody) it may not be necessary to have WinNT support in this
fashion.

According to some analysts, if Rhapsody runs on all the PowerPC Macs and
clones made today, and all the PPCP designed machines coming out this
summer or fall, and Intel machines (NeXTStep ran on 486s for years), there
is a good chance that windows applications will be available as well
running on top of Rhapsody. That would set the software world on edge.

Some of the features and benefits of the PPCP for ourselves:
- Cheaper computers, estimations of $1000 US. Another possibility is more
disk space or CPU speed for the same dollar.
- IBM style parallel printer connections. This will let users buy cheap
(sometimes you get what you pay for however) printers.
- Maybe ISA slots like PCs. The only thing I would put in these slots is
maybe an internal modem. It's neater than an external one on your desk.
>From working in the IBM world, there are too many jumpers and DIP switches
for my patience. I get to fix them at work, no one should be required to go
through it.
- Hopefully no manufacturer will omit the software eject capability of the
floppy drive. This would be a big step backwards in my opinion. When the OS
needs the next diskette, it spits out the first one. Seems so logical. It
is very awkward and archaic to have to manually eject, then press OK when
you've inserted the next one. That's the kind of detail that I expect my
software to take care of.
- probably PS/2 style keyboards and mice. Again, cheap to buy, more
variety. As someone who has taught PC users though, one of their
frustrations is the second or third button on the mouse. What do they do?
Apple designed their mouse with only one button, how can you guess the
wrong one.

>From the May MacUser issue, speed is improved as well. The initial release
of the PPCP will have a 66 MHz internal bus, faster than the current crop
of Macs and clones (up to 50MHz.) This comes out as a 25% improvement in
processor performance.

For those not at our March meeting, let me tell you, Neel Amin gave us a
great introduction to the NeXT system. All the information was 5 years old,
yes folks, FIVE YEARS OLD. And as witnessed by the oohs and aahs in the
crowd, it still impressed the knowledgeable people in attendance.
Personally, the creation of the database  by Steve Jobs was my favourite.

Bill McQuire has a PowerBook 3400 coming, so I won't talk much about it.
Heard it's pretty hot stuff though, can't wait to see it.

My next machine is likely to be a desktop model, my PowerBook never seems
to get out of the house. It stays chained to my desk, CD, ZIP drive, colour
monitor, printer, etc.

I'm looking forward to the release of Connectix VirtualPC. I have been an
Insignia  SoftPC user for quite a few years. It was fine when in the DOS
days, but SoftWindows on my older machine is a bit too slow for my liking.

Better close for now.
Hope to see you at the meeting.

Brian Fouhse
bfouhse@cableregina.com