225 is currently the fastest desktop PC ever. It’s
powered by a PowerPC 604e processor and runs at
225MHz and really screams along, as you may expect.
Power Computing are also shipping 180MHz and 200MHz
versions. The PowerTower Pro 225 is reportedly 60
percent faster than Apple’s flagship, the Power Mac
9500/150 and even the 180MHz version is reportedly
40 percent faster! All the new machines ship with 2Gb
IBM internal drives, which again have performed very
well in tests. If 2Gb isn’t sufficient you could take
advantage of the PowerTower Pro RAID option, two 4Gb
IBM drives connected to an Adaptec UltraSCSI PCI card,
which will set you back another $1300. Both of the
PowerTower Pros come equipped with an IMS TwinTurbo
accelerated-graphics adapter with an updated driver that
boosts speed significantly. Again, the two new machines beat the
competition hands-down. The graphics tests on the new machines reportedly tripled the results of the PowerMac 9500/150. The PowerTower Pros both come with 8x CD-ROM drives as opposed to Apple’s PM 9500/150, which is still shipping with a 4x CD-ROM drive. All three of Power Computing’s new models also use a caching driver which improves performance considerably.
The PowerTower Pros are based on the Tsunami architecture, which Apple uses in the Power Mac 9500 as opposed to the Catalyst motherboard design, which Apple uses in the Power Mac 7200. Tsunami-based systems have several advantages over Catalyst-based ones, including support for memory interleaving, which speeds data transfers between RAM and the main processor, and six PCI-card slots, compared to just three in Catalyst systems. Catalyst does have one performance edge over Tsunami, however: Catalyst's maximum system-bus speed is 60 MHz, compared to 50 MHz on Tsunami.
Power has packaged the PowerTower Pros in a new minitower case. The case looks a lot like the PowerTowers' but has more space for internal storage devices and plenty of room in which to work. Once you take off the cover - the left side panel comes off with the removal of two thumbscrews - six drive bays, six PCI slots, the processor slot, and eight DIMM slots are all easily accessible. Installing extra RAM is quick and easy, something which can be very tedious to do in many of Apple’s machines.
A multimedia option for the new machines includes a Miro DC20 video-capture and -playback card, Adobe Premiere LE, and Adobe Photoshop LE. Power Computing promises that this package will let you capture and output 640-x-480-pixel, 30-frame-per-second video. (The Power Mac 8500 lets you grab about 25 fps at a 320-x-240-pixel resolution.) This option must be purchased along with a system, and pricing will vary with system configuration. But if you added the bundle to a $4,200 PowerTower Pro 180 with 32 MB of RAM and a 1-MB L2 cache, the price would be about $5,000. That's considerably more than the $4,400 you pay for a base-model 8500/150, but considering that the PowerTower Pro comes with a keyboard and double the RAM and L2 cache, it's an outstanding value.
Power Computing’s new offerings are something to be proud of and have certainly widened the gap between themselves and Apple. If you’re looking for sheer speed at a reasonable price and aren’t too bothered about the ‘Apple badge’ then the PowerTower Pros are machines to take a serious look at.
Ratings: 92%
 
 
After the success of the Zip Drive Iomega have been working
hard to finish the Jaz Drive, capable of storing 1Gb of
information, while being a lot faster. In fact, Iomega claim that
the Jaz Drive can transfer up to 10Mb per second, a figure
which compares favourably with non-removable hard drives.
The new drive from Iomega doesn’t use a standard SCSI
connector, instead it uses a HD-50 SCSI connector, but an
adaptor is included. Eight SCSI id numbers are also included, the
Zip Drive only had two. The software drivers come on one floppy
disk, while extra utilities are included on the Jaz Tools cartridge
including a utility similar to SCSI Probe which enables to the Jaz
to be quickly mounted onto any other Mac or PC. Dantz’s Disk Fit Direct is the back-up software which is bundled with the drive and Iomega’s Findit software catalogues cartridges so you can tell which files are where even when the cartridge isn’t mounted. The Jaz Drive costs £499 + VAT ($499), although expect the street price to be around £400 with extra 1Gb cartridges costing £89 + VAT ($99). The only competition which claims to have better performance than the Jaz Drive is SyQuest’s shortly to be released SyJet, with 1.3Gb cartridges.
If you have occasional files which are needing to be backed up then the Zip Drive stills looks the better option, but if you have large files which you regularly need to back-up the Jaz Drive looks like a very attractive option, especially with its hard drive speed performance.
Rating: 87%
 
With a number of great programs already under his belt, including Kai’s Power Tools, Kai’s Vector Effects and KPT Bryce, Kai Krause has recently released Kai’s Power Goo, which is a fun-type photo manipulation program. There are no menus, instead there are nine different coloured buttons which are used, once you’ve remembered what the different colours are used for you can shrink the buttons down so there is more workspace. Smear, smudge and nudge are three of the tools that basically do the same job, except they use different brush sizes. You can’t choose different brush sizes because the interface has been made as simple as possible. The smear, smudge and nudge tools can all be used to push about noses, eyebrows, ears etc. The other buttons include UnGoo, Smooth, Mirror Toggle, Move, Grow/Shrink and Reset. UnGoo simply allows you to return to the original in selected areas whereas Smooth does as the name suggests and smooths the image. To make an area larger or smaller you simply turn clockwise or anti-clockwise, which means you don’t have to use selection marquees. Another set of buttons are available which twirl, bulge, spike or rotate the image. You can also animate an image by adding frames to a filmstrip along the bottom of the screen as you distort the image. In the ‘Fusion’ Room you can merge two different faces together, by copying bits from each face to create totally new and bizarre faces. Kai’s Power Goo is priced at £39 + VAT and is the first program by Kai Krause to be copy protected. In order to run the program you must have the CD inserted. The CD-ROM contains 128 photographs of men, women and children along with 16 celebrities including Major, Nixon and Charles and Di. There are also 32 images of animals and objects. Goo can only work with images in a workspace of 360 by 360 pixels, so if your image is larger it will be shrunk and corners will be cut of until it is square. TIFF, JPEG or GIF files are not supported, only PICT and PhotoShop files. In an attempt to make the interface as simple as possible there are a number of features that may irritate the professional, including the image size limit. However, Kai’s Power Goo is a great program that holds hours of fun and you’ll almost certainly find a use for it in your work.
