1998: I thought that a good topic to kick off The Road Warrior would be the machine I’m typing this column on, the PowerBook 5300, which has been my workhorse computer for more than two years. Of course, I would love to have a new PowerBook G3 Series machine like the ones I’ve had an […]
Monthly Archives: March 1998
It’s the hot new technology for 1998: modem bonding. Windows 95 supports it, many modem makers support it, and ISPs are beginning to support it.
1998: I recommend you read It’s the Latency, Stupid by Stuart Cheshire to get a good understanding of latency, then come back to this overview.
1998: According to the hype, v.90 (a.k.a. 56k) modems are the greatest thing since Zip drives. In some respects, they are. They’re ideal for surfing the World Wide Web, but perhaps less than ideal for other uses.
1998: We’ve looked at packets, compression, and latency. We’ve seen that each takes a toll on throughput. The following shows the effect of this at various modem speeds.
Code named Gossamer, this faster version of the Beige G3 builds on Apple’s success with the 233 and 266 MHz Late 1997 models. In addition to a 300 MHz PowerPC 750 (a.k.a. G3) CPU, the 300 MHz model has the option of a 1 MB backside cache – twice as big as in the earlier models. […]
1998: Should the Internet be a tax-free zone? President Clinton thinks it’s a good idea. Anyone shopping on the Internet is inclined to agree. Why would anyone oppose the Internet Tax Freedom Act?
Sad to report that Rodney Lain finally committed suicide on 6/14/02. He had gone off his anti-depressants.
March 1998 – This letter was written in response to news reports that the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, was considering phasing out Macs in favor of Windows computers. This letter should be appearing soon in Imprint, the university newspaper.
1998 – There are several variables that determine hard drive throughput: How fast your Mac can move data over the SCSI or IDE bus, how fast your drive can move data over the drive bus, and caching, including both disk caching by your Mac and the disk’s internal data buffer.
Apple popularized SCSI (small computer system interface) by making it a standard feature on the third Macintosh, the Mac Plus, which was introduced in January 1986. Although Apple only embraced a subset of the emerging SCSI standard, the new bus allowed chaining up to seven peripherals to the computer. The 8-bit parallel interface was theoretically […]
“No Newton is good news.” “Apple kills the Newton.” “Life after Newton.” These are just a few of the headlines since Apple’s Feb. 27 announcement to discontinue the innovative but unprofitable handheld computers. Although it would have been nice if Apple could have sold the Newton division and its technology to someone else, the fact […]
