POWERWATCH NEWS POWERWATCH VIEWS POWERWATCH SYSTEMS POWER TECH POWERWATCH FILES ABOUT POWERWATCH POWERWATCH LINKS JEFF'S LOSTWORLD		November 1996 Power News Archive (Up to December 1996 News)   Wednesday, November 27 Everybody who bought their PowerTower 180e or 200e before I did (9/26/96) has received them. Tuesday, November 26 Power Computing and Be, Inc. have announced an exclusive deal which will bundle the BeOS with every new Power system purchased anytime after today. Of course, since the BeOS doesn't ship until January, people who buy systems before then will probably get a voucher for a copy when it's made available. Read the press release for more.   Monday, November 25 MacMall's latest catalog says that all new CPU orders get a free copy of Painter 4. However, remember that MacMall isn't exactly quick in fulfilling orders, especially for PowerBases. In fact, nobody's received one from MacMall yet. Some of you may have noticed that PowerWatch Views was down this morning. I think our server was upgraded to a Pentium Pro 200, so that might explain it. Sunday, November 24 I got the official word about that Mac the Knife story concerning prison laborers building computers. While the Knife doesn't say what company it is, it does say that it's a Texas-based company, so it leads one to believe that it could be Power. However, I have been assured that it is a Motorola licensee called MacTel that is doing this, not Power Computing. If you own a PowerBase and use FWB CD Toolkit 2.0 or greater, than you should grab the latest version of CDT (2.0.5) which addresses bugs with these machines.   Friday, November 22 I'm looking for some insight from some of you on two subjects: Digital Cameras- I still want one, but I don't know what to get in the current crop of them... New topics for the message boards A couple of people have told me that Power is temporarily out of Mini-Tower cases, which is holding up some orders. But this should be resolved in a few days. I'd like to discourage something which is becoming more popular on PowerWatch Views: Cross-posting. Please, post only once in one area. I don't want to have flame mail spreading through the boards, so please, stop. Sorry for the lack of a Thursday update ... must've been the rain.   Wednesday, November 20 A reader wrote in with some interesting info about getting a PT 180e [His] original sales person was taken off sales and placed on the production line. Roughly 20% of the sales force has been moved to the production line. IBM shipments of 180e chips to Power average 100-200 per day, customer orders for PT 180e systems has been ~2000 a week! PCC has no control over what IBM allocates them from week to week. They are now quoting 8 weeks or more for PT 180e systems. Some sales agents have stopped selling 180e systems. PCC Execs are tring to figure out who in PCC dropped the ball on properly forcasting the popularity of the PT 180e units. (It's only the BEST price/preformance unit near the high end) Ric has a story over on MacInTouch about upcoming Power systems and the BeOS too: The word from a Be demo last night is that Power Computing has both 300-Mhz and dual-processor systems in the works. The company will apparently ship the BeOS on CD-ROM with all its systems in 1997, offering customers the choice of which OS to use. More graphical redesign has taken place, with the banner image above being dynamic (there are four rotating images right now). Did you see us in Macweek yesterday?   Tuesday, November 19 PowerWatch has a new header graphic! I made it yesterday and think it's pretty cool ... do you?   Monday, November 18 MacCentral has a story about Power Computing offering all-in-one video and graphics cards from Elecede Technologies. I'd like to thank everyone who participated in the Psychology memory test over the weekend! We've got more results than we can handle! Thanks!! Saturday, November 16 We've got the MacWorld review of PowerBases from their January issue. I've added a new category to PowerWatch Views concerning the BeOS. It seems there are rumors flying about that Power is about to sign a deal with Be that will bundle the BeOS with every Power machine! Cool!   Friday, November 15 PowerLogix is beginning production of the Mach 9 accerelerator today! You can visit their news page and even see a picture of this beast!   Thursday, November 14 Todays topic: Making PowerWatch even more popular. We've been featured on various Mac web sites, will be in Macweek next week, but how can we reach the levels of activity that the other big mac web sites are getting? I'd like to hear some suggestions!   Wednesday, November 13 There's a article about Mac clones in next week's Macweek. You can read the story online. You may notice that I'm quoted in the middle of it.. back when I was waiting for my PT 200e (read my journal for more). But all should know that everything worked out great and my PT200e is amazing! Some exciting news today! PowerWatch has the exclusive pictures of the Power Computing Online Store! Yes, it's online ordering! I've got a picture of the front page, the main menu, and the PowerTower Pro configuration page. Soon, you'll even be able to see exactly where your order is, even where in the production phase. And it's all powered by Power machines! Cool! We've got a great review of the PowerBase 200 on our PowerBase page. Thanks, Jeff Saxe!   Tuesday, November 12 Some users have reported ship waits for PowerTower 180e systems of up to 12 weeks. This isn't good news, and it's important to remember that it's not Power's fault. Brian Combs has this to say: The 180MHz PowerPC 604e is heading into a 200MHz-like constraint from Motorola and IBM. Robert Jagitsch from PowerLogix tells me that Mach 9 accerators for Power systems should be ready to ship by the end of this week!   Monday, November 11 After a wonderful half-day at Disneyland yesterday, I have returned with big news. Power Computing has hired former Dell President Joel Kocher and Gateway 2000 Sales VP Todd Osborn. Read the press release.   Sunday, November 10 Newer Techologies needs our help in getting Clockometer to work! So, if you have a PowerTower 200e, PTP 200, or PTP 225: Please download Clockometer (1.9.1b5), run it, and hold down 'D' as you click RECALCULATE. Then report the information reported below the normal stats. (e.g. 252.0000 (190.0000-G, 47.0000-G). Thanks!! Saturday, November 9 Yesterday was the best day in PowerWatch history! Probably the mention on several prominent web sites helped considerably! Some stats from yesterday and as a whole: 43,000 raw hits yesterday (830,000 total) 32,000+ unique hosts served total 6.7gb data transferred Over 53,000 total hits to the home page!   Friday, November 8 I got another beta of Clockometer (1.9.1b5). I still get the bus speed of 50mhz. I'd like PT 200e and PTP 225 users to user this and report back with their bus speeds! A reader sent in a great report about a PowerTower 166. Most interesting is adding the IMS card separately, and pros and cons. After reading through about 20 spam mails about floppy drive architecture, I managed to add more comments from David Theil as well as some new comments from Chris Deery about PowerBase 180 systems!   Thursday, November 7 Continuing the Clockometer saga.. a new beta version (available on our FTP site!) now says my bus speed is 50mhz. This is more believable. Still waiting for a straight answer. More info on why Clockometer says my PT 200e has a 44.4mhz bus speed, from Jon Fitch, VP of Engineering at Power Computing: "In answer to the specific question, I doubt that his machine is really running at 44.4. This would require a 4.5:1 divider, which does not work on the 604e (if it did, we would be shipping a 225/50 instead of a 225/45). The bus speed is actually set by the oscillator on the CPU card, then some configuration resistors are set to multiply up the core speed. Both the bus speed and core speed are electronically checked both when the card is first assembled and after the system is built." A PC Week story says that Power Computing will hire Joel Kocher as its new president and CEO. Kocher is currently the the president and COO of Artisoft Inc. and was the former President of Dell Inc. Chris Harmon of Newer Technologies had this to say about the bus speed of my PowerTower 200e, according to their program Clockometer: We honestly don't know what their bus speed should be. My copy of GURU doesn't show a number. BUT if you have a 1 meg cache on the machine I will almost guarantee it is the 44.44 mhz speed. PowerWatch broke the 50,000 hit barrier to the home page last night! Yeah! Over 700,000 raw hits, 19,000 per day, over 5 gigs of data transferred! Best of all, PowerWatch isn't going away anytime soon-- and we've got some exciting news coming soon! Looks like David Theil is the first PowerWatch reader to receive his PowerBase system! Congrats! I am posting his MacBench scores and reviews on the PowerBase info page. Even more info posted this afternoon! Exciting News: I spoke with Mike Rosenfelt, self proclaimed Marketing Weasel of Power Computing last night. I have to say there are some very exciting things that will be going on here on PowerWatch and from PowerComputing! An example is that the web site is being completely retrofitted, with online ordering and order tracking to be available! I'm sure that'll bring those phone wait times down! Also, Mike told me that 9/10 of the people on the list below should've received their systems by today! If you have or haven't received it yet, let me know! Don't forget to keep your eye here for many exciting developments! Wednesday, November 6 It's official: PowerBase 180 and 200 systems are shipping! (that means shipping to people like you!) Thanks, Brian Combs :-) If you get one, be sure to go to the PowerBase page and fill out the form with your review! Tuesday, November 5 Power Computing's web site has a new look to the home page. Frames, frames, frames. Looks nice though, although I think only the home page was changed. As many of you know, the Global Village modems that come with Power systems are not upgradable to 33.6k. Power is looking into the problem. From all I can tell, PowerCenters are still taking 3-4 weeks to ship, not what I posted yesterday. Also, I guess PowerBases are officially shipping, but nobody seems to have one yet.   Monday, November 4 A PowerWatch reader told me that Power Computing now says 4-6 weeks for PowerCenters due to the holiday rush. I won't be changing ShipWatch until I hear this a few more times.... I went back to the older v3.5 IMS driver after getting annoyed with v.3.6 "erasing" the screen at startup, which kills the startup screen.   Sunday, November 3 Once again, PowerWatch is the exclusive source for the IMS Twin Turbo driver v. 3.6! It can be found on our ftp site, Power Files (har har har). The read me says that it fixes possible Type 11 crashes in Photoshop, as well as a text highlighting problem. Thanks, Douglas Pease!   Saturday, November 2 A Macweek story tells how Apple isn't letting clone makers sell any clone laptops yet. Hmmm.... On a side note, Macweek is looking for users to write in about useful web sites. Know any? See the details on Macweek's home page. Friday, November 1 It looks like Apple is acquiring Be Inc. and it's BeOS and will create a hybrid operating system. More in a Macweek story. Thanks, John Morgan! This is interesting.. Techtool 1.1.2 says some strange things about my PowerTower 200e: Hardware Vendor: Power Computing Corporation Machine Type: PowerTower 166 Gestalt ID: 108 CPU Type: PPC604e (Built-in FPU) CPU Speed: 190 MHz Bus Speed: 47 MHz Many other users have reported similar findings. It seems that Techtool uses a database for this info, and doesn't have any real way of finding this info out. For example, it thinks a PT 166 is a 604e (Down to October News Archive)

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